Feb 28th, 2010 7:49pm

In an attempt to bring back the challenge Friday's of yore - our group at work headed to Lobbby's Burgers in Tempe to see if we could double our previous efforts and tackle their 2lb burger at lunch.  Of course nothing is that simple in my life....

Lobby's just opened up so don't be surprised if you haven't heard of it.  Its basically a standard Chicago beef/burger/dog place and while nothing really stands out for me there, it does have pretty good food and a nice clean atmosphere.  It also has the 3lb challenge if your feeling up to it.

Almost immediately, our innocent attempt at 2lb burgers got 30% larger due to an added required pound of fries.  Shortly thereafter, the owner (Lobby) informed us that to get the meal for free and put your picture up on the wall of fame/shame/gluttony/insanity you had to add cheese on each patty, toss on all the extras(onions, lettuce tomato) and consume the whole shebang in no more than 10 minutes.

As any good programmer would - I did the math.  I can get down a 1lb burger (sans cheese) in about 4 minutes.  This leaves me 2 minutes for the pound of fries if I'm lucky and don't miss a beat.  I was trying to think positive though, and since Cupp and Dale would also be giving it their best shot I couldn't very well back out now.

When the burgers came out I knew I was in trouble.  There was probably a quarter pound of cheese alone on there and my preparations of running that morning and skipping dinner the night before seemed feeble in front of the tower of beef.  Fearlessly though I surveyed the situation, formulated a plan consisting of alternating fries then burger and asked the waitress to hit the timer.

Cupp and Dale started shortly after I did - they basically took on the same strategy and pace that I did as well.  First the top bun and the toppings, then hammer on the patties and fries.  I had to start dunking fries in my drink almost immediately to keep things moving.  This sucked because the fries were damn good before that.

At 3 minutes I had managed at least a pound of food.  At 6 I was halfway done with the burger and nearly done with the fries.  Unfortunately this is where I fell apart.  The cheese and burger grease was just too much and even though I was on pace to finish - I basically had to stop at 8 minutes after finishing all of my fries to prevent food reversal.  Sure I might have missed anyway with a full pound left at the 2 minute mark, but in hindsight it was probably a good decision as no one wants to hurl in a burger joint.

Cupp did his best to drown his fries in ketchup to maintain pace, but he too succumb about the same time and finished just short of my mark with a few fries left and the same 1lb of burger to go.  Dale opted for the meat route and managed an additional patty.  Unfortunately he had had to sacrifice a lot of fries to do it.  Overall it was a basically a draw and Lobby's was the real winner with our hard earned cash and no need to put us all up on the wall of fame/shame/gluttony/insanity.

Maybe next time... or maybe not.  All I wanted to do after the meal was crawl under my desk and go to sleep.  Definitely not recommended for daytime consumption.