Rodney

I came in second in a pizza-eating contest. There were about 15 guys, and we each had to be the first to finish a large cheese pizza.

I'm a big guy, can be a big eater, and naturally eat fast. I was neck-and-neck with one other guy.

He had a strategy: he ate all the topping first, slurped it down, then went back for the crust. Must have worked for him because he was a much smaller guy and he kept ahead of me most of the way. I caught up for a little bit (I learned later), but he pulled ahead and was the first to put the last bit of pizza in his mouth. _But he couldn't swallow it. He was topped out._ I'd swallowed mine already, and he was still sitting there with sweat on his face and the judge standing over him telling him that he had to swallow to win. He finally got it down, kept it down for 30 seconds, and then threw it up. They let him win. By rights, I was the first to actually "consume" the pizza, but he played the rules smart and won the prize. In a down-and-dirty eat 'till you puke contest, of course, I would have won. He'd taken a dose of something to help him throw it all up afterwards, too, and keep his girlish figure -- whimp. No respect for the food.

If I had to do it all over again, what I'd do is take every spare second I could, while I'm chewing, to tear each piece of pizza into pieces with my hands. For me, my jaws started to go before my stomach did -- all that chewing and ripping really fatigued the jaw muscles. So if you can reduce the amount of chewing you have to do by ripping up the pieces a little in advance, do so. I guess this is strategy is somewhat similar to that of the Japanese hotdog champ: by breaking up the dogs in advance, he saves chewing time and energy.