July 4th – in the US, that is the day of the celebration of the declaration of our independence, hamburgers, hot dogs, apple pie, games, races, and Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest at Coney Island.
How Many Miles the Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Champion Would Have to Run to Burn Those Calories
In 10 minutes, contestants have to see how many of Nathan’s famous hot dogs and buns they can consume – and keep down. For many years – 14 in total – the champion has been Joey Chestnut, an absolute force in the world of championship eating.
This year for 2021, the winner was Joey Chestnut again. To win, he consumed a staggering 76 hot dogs and buns in the allotted 10 minutes and broke his own world record in the process. That earned him $10,000 for his efforts.
Being that I talk about running here and running burns calories, I thought it would be interesting to see how many miles he would need to run to burn up the calories consumed in that space of 10 minutes.
How Many Miles It Would Take to Burn the Calories from 76 Hot Dogs
While Joey Chestnut has said before that he does do a bit of running, I doubt he runs this much in a day or even a week (this is elite marathoner-kind of mileage!! Here are the numbers to see how many miles he would need to run to burn off the hot dogs from the 2021 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest. These numbers are approximate based on nutritional information gained online regarding the hot dogs and buns as well as the weight and pace of Joey.
- 280 calories per hot dog and bun
- 76 hot dogs eaten
- He weighs about 229 pounds
- An average pace of 10 minutes per mile would yield 178 calories per mile
- He consumed (just in hot dogs and buns, not counting drinks) 21,280 calories in just 10 minutes!
- That works together for a total of roughly 119 miles
For just 10 minutes of eating, if he kept all those down, it would take almost 119 miles of running to burn off all those calories! Wow! Of course, I am not saying he should run that many miles to burn those calories! After all, this guy does this for a living and maintains a pretty good weight so he has it figured out! I just thought it would be interesting to see how many miles it would take to run off that many hot dogs.
On that note, did anyone head out for one of the hundreds of races around the US this morning? July 4th races are some of my favorites!
Featured image from Nathan’s Hot Dog website
