Week 3

Riley Van Pelt


















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Year: Senior
Major: Advertising Management and Sales Leadership
College: Communication Arts and Sciences
Hometown: New Buffalo, Mi
High School: New Buffalo High School
Favorite Event: 1 mile baby!
Other Activities Outside of MSURC: MSU Global Sales Leadership Society, Academic Orientation Program

What brought you to Running Club?: I joined the running club, because I didn’t want to stop competing in running after high school. I was just starting to find my stride with running, but I wasn’t good enough to be a part of MSU’s actual team. So on one Sunday afternoon during my senior year of high school, I was meeting up with a different running club. A former MSU Running Club member by the name of Old Man Blosser showed up to this particular practice and basically promoted the running club to me. His description sounded perfect to me, so I did some research and follow @MSURunning on Twitter. When they followed me back, I was absolutely pumped. And now I run that Twitter account lmao.

About Riley:

During my freshmen year of college, me and Tommy Brettscheider decided to partake in the Okemos IHOP challenge. The challenge was to beat the record for living in IHOP, which at the time was 54 hours. If we completed this, we would get our names permanently on a plaque in IHOP… and of course have pride. We were super confident that we could complete this challenge easily over Spring Break. In fact, we were too confident.


So after partying the night before, getting 5 hours of sleep, and going on a 9-mile-long run, we entered the doors of IHOP. We had called the manager the night before and he said it would be awesome if we did the challenge. However, a different manager was there the next day and he almost didn’t let us do it. After some thorough convincing by Tommy B, we were able to still do it… except now we were not allowed to sleep. If we slept, we would be kicked out. This added to the whole drama of the experience and made it a much tougher challenge, but we were still going to push through.

The challenge started off easy. We just had to order food every 8 hours and play around on our computers. However, at the 20-hour mark, life started to get really rough for me. To help make my life better, Tommy B and I thought it would be a good idea to order the All You Can Eat Shrimp at IHOP. This would lead to my inevitable downfall. I got sick around hour 28 and had to leave at hour 29, just barely over halfway there. I abandoned Tommy B, and he ended up falling asleep and getting kicked on out at hour 33.

After our failed attempt, our buddy and his friend ended up doing the IHOP challenge last spring. They made it 65 hours and crushed our record without sleeping. RIP. So there are a lot of morals to this story… even the best fall down sometimes, always plan for the worst, there’s always someone better than you, don’t order the All You Can Eat Shrimp at IHOP, etc. Either way, the people you meet on the running club can take you for a wild ride. It’s a fun time. ​​

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