Pittsburgh City Marathon

If you ask anyone who knows me what I have been doing for the last year they will tell you my life has been consumed by Fischer Nutrition. So far it has been incredibly exciting and ever changing. One day I may be giving a lecture for No Boundaries Fitness or American Adventure Sports, the next I may be at a weight management meeting at the YMCA, or I could be on my bike talking to a group of triathletes. In April I was in the process of making and serving 7,800 pancakes. No that is not a typo. And yes I actually made 7,800 pancakes. Why? Because I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to network with the Dick’s Sporting Goods Pittsburgh City Marathon and be a corporate sponsor of this years race.

Now, if you ever decide to be a corporate sponsor and make this many pancakes allow me to give you some advice. Determine if your friends, coworkers, and family are as totally awesome as you think they are. Trust me, you will be calling in all sorts of favors. If you don’t have a network of people as awesome as mine DO NOT attempt this. But if you do here is a ten step process to help guide you.

 

 

Step one:

Agree to make post workout recovery pumpkin pancakes for 3,500 people. Then panic because you realize what you just did. To better exemplify the situation think about this. You will need a little more than 75 gallons of batter. An average bathtub hold about 25 gallons of water which means that you will need 3 bathtubs of batter. At his point I ran straight to Sun Dawg Cafe and then to Headkeeper Tapas Bar later that night. I definitely needed advice.

Step two:

Figure out your plan of attack and then call in favors. You will need to start this about 6 weeks out. How will you make the pancakes? On-site or elsewhere? Even more important, how will you make and store 75 gallons of batter. After much discussion with my friends in the food service industry it was determined that:

1. I’m an idiot
2. I would make the batter at the Ramada Inn in Greensburg, store the batter in 5 gallon buckets at J Corks, make the pancakes at Sun Dawg Cafe, cool the pancakes back at J Corks, transport them to the 4 freezer chests that I rented and filled my kitchen with, then transport the pancakes in the freezers to the marathon, reheat them on gas griddles and serve out of chaffers. Sounds simple right?

Step three:

Begin having nightmares. I am not talking about dreams where you go to class in your underwear or are on Elm Street fighting to stay alive. I’m talking about dreams where you drown in the batter you made WHILE fighting to stay alive on Elm Street in your underwear. Seriously, one night I woke in a cold sweat doing calculations to determine the volume of freezer space I needed to store the pancakes. Most dudes dreams about marring super models and being rich and famous. Not this cool guy, I dream of pancakes and freezers.

 

Step four:

As a corporate sponsor you will have to provide VIP goodie bags. In this case I needed 700. I chose to make a quinoa, veggie, spice pack that fit the needs for a recovery meal as well as a healthy, tasty family meal. Trust me, you will needs friends for this. It took nearly 24 straight hours to make them. That is not including the time that went into designing the labels. Me, my sister, and two dietitian friends sat in American Adventure Sports all night building goodie bags. This was the only night that I didn’t have nightmares because you have to sleep to have nightmares.

Step five:

Press the START button. Set everything in motion, figure what you will need and get all your supplies. To save you the math let me just tell you what you need. 160 pounds of whole wheat flour, 50 dozen eggs, 33 gallons of milk, 12 cups of baking powder, 10 pounds of sugar, almost 100 pounds of pumpkin, 4 cups vanilla, and 1 pound of salt. I was so stressed out when making these purchases that when a gentleman in the checkout line asked me if I was making pancakes I looked at him as if I was Shelley Duvall from the Shining and said, “Stop talking.”

 

 

 

Step six:

Begin batter production and storage. This is where you will really need the favors to pull through. The mixer and the kitchen staff at both the Ramada and J Corks were key players. By far the largest mixer I have ever used. It took two people to pour the batter into 5 gallon buckets. I was making nearly 11 gallons at a time. It took about 8 hours to make 75 gallons of batter. Don’t forget to store the batter.

 

I have rappelled, upside down, free-hanging into pitch-black caves 90 foot deep,  been chased by a moose, and crashed my pedal bike at 52 miles an hour, yet driving the 15, five gallon buckets of batter to J Corks was one of the scariest things I have ever done. I carefully navigated my Subaru Outback through town containing a little over 1000 pounds of super viscous liquid. I feared that one brake pump too hard and I would either die from blunt force trauma or drown in the front seat of my car. I swear to you that I would have ran over a box of baby Nick Fischers to avoid spiking my brakes. For about 15 minutes I was the most dangerous thing on the road.

 

Step seven:

Start making and freezing the pancakes. Yet again you will test your friendships to the max. If you have friends like mine they will help you even without the promise of Coronas, but it can’t hurt to have some on hand, just saying. Sun Dawg Cafe served as the production facility and again J corks, just around the corner, served as the cooling/storage facility before the finished product was frozen at my house.

We had three griddles running for about 50 hours spread over 4 days. At peak production I averaged about 240 pancakes an hour. We became so fast I had to rent an extra freezer to speed up the freezing process. However myself and my helpers began to crack after about 20 hours. Pancakes started to look like Pangea lost all appeal. Mr. Magoo and Louis Braille could have made better looking, more consistent pancakes.

 

I was so fed up at one that I took my car to my friends farm to spin tires in his field and blow off steam. This was a great idea, tires were spinning super well and the car felt like it could slide it all over the field. Then I looked to the north side of the field and noticed the manure spreader…  By the end of pancake production I decided that rather than make the last bucket of batter I would be better off pouring it into the stream behind my house. Eat up, fish!!! The thought of making one more pancake was just too much to handle. When the pancakes were done I had only dropped 6 pancakes, eaten 10 pancakes, and cried twice.  Oh and the nightmares continue.

Step eight:

Make 25 gallons blueberry puree as a syrup. This sounds like a lot…cause it is. 150 pounds of blueberries take longer to puree than you think.

Step nine:

Deliver pancakes and all supplies to serving location. In this case it was the Corporate Challenge Tent at Point Park. At this point all the hard stuff is out of the way. My car still smelled like poo though.

 

Step ten:

Serve the pancakes. But first take a step back and watch for just a minute. Like I said, to make this many pancakes and serve them will require you to have the best friends, coworkers, and family. If you have managed to pull this off you should see a group of people wearing shirts with your name on them. Some of them may have worked all night and only slept for 2 hours, but they are all there because they want you to succeed.  I cannot thank them enough.  I wish I had pictures of all the people who helped me, or at least pictures that they would not kill me for posting.

 

  

Again I cannot stress enough how crucial it is have a good network of friends, family, and coworkers.  It is safe to say that I will never eat a pancake again.