I Can Eat Fifty Eggs

It turns out that eating contests, at least at the top rung of the sport, all take place within an extremely short time frame. Nathans' Hot Dog Eating Contest, probably the most American event of the year, lasts 12 minutes, during which the contestants are expected to eat more than 50 hot dogs. You probably know that already, but most other eating contests don't last much longer.

I'm sure that's a perfectly good standard, if you like to see people dip buns in water, the better to eat them with, but it is surprising that eating contests never test stamina. How many hot dogs can Joey Chestnut eat in an hour? How many hot dogs could he eat in a day? In short (and vague), how many hot dogs can these people eat in a sitting? Why is nobody interested in the answer to this question?

I'd like to think that a day-long contest could allow contestants to keep some of their dignity, eating hot dogs on the bun (and oysters out of the shell, rather than shucked into mason jars). Nobody wants to know how many hot dogs a man can eat in 12 minutes. It's supposed to be about the food, not the clock. They want to know how many hot dogs a man can eat before he says, "No more!"