How running has helped Joey Chestnut become a hot-dog-eating champion

Joey ‘Jaws’ Chestnut, who recently ate 63 hot dogs to win his 15th Fourth of July Nathan’s Hot Dog eating competition on New York’s Coney Island, has a well-documented training program designed to overcome his body’s physical limits. In short, he trains like a marathon runner.Chestnut told GQ Magazine that his training includes two months of “simulated contests,” in which he eats as if it were July 4. “It’s really just training to stave off nausea that a typical person would endure when their stomach gets full,” says Chestnut. “It’s similar to marathon training, when you are slowly ramping up. Hitting times and distances again and again.”

To understand the pain marathon runners go through, Chestnut, 38, took part in his first marathon at California’s Surf City Marathon in 2019, where he ran 5:02:44. “Eating hot dogs is like a marathon runner running,” Chestnut explained in Brooklyn Reporter in 2021. “Your body is telling you that it’s tired, but you ignore certain feelings at the end of the race.”Besides using running as a way to work off the 17,000 calories of 63 hot dogs, it’s clear it can help the mental side of the sport too.

posted Sunday July 10th
by Running Magazine