Miles in
2014: 60.9
Days until
Nike DC Women’s Half Marathon: 100
As I sit her with the inevitable post-marathon plague, you
know the one you get when you stop moving and all of a sudden your body attacks
you a cold, I have a few minutes to reflect on 4 days, 4 parks, and 48.6 miles! I knew the Dopey Challenge wouldn’t be an
easy undertaking and Leah and I battled for days before we signed up for it,
but now that it’s over I’m so glad we did!
Day one: Thursday 3.1 miles – Waking up to run 3.1 miles on
a Thursday is no big deal usually, most Thursdays we log more like 5-6
miles. We did have to be awake much
earlier to make it to Disney with plenty of time to be ready to run. Having learned our lesson last year, we
agreed to get to Disney about 2 hours before the race start every day. Leah and I parked within minutes of each other
which was good since she had my bibs and shirts. We hung out in her car for a bit before meeting
up with Amy and Carolyn. We made the
rookie mistake of stopping at the first set of porto-potts we came to and I luckily
used the last of the toilet paper in mine!
We said good bye to Amy at the corrals and met up with Dennis to enter
our corrals. I had a C corral start, and
everyone else had a D corral start. I
tried to remind Dennis that we were most likely faster than everyone in this
corral and his usual “start at the very back and let everyone pass us” plan was
a bad idea but no one listened to me. So
with the start of our corral, just I predicted it was crowded and we passed
hundreds of people the whole time we ran.
So, you know what that means, it was super crowded! While I know that this is called the “Family
Fun Run” the number of little kids darting around or being drug by their
parents made navigating the course tricky and sometimes a little
dangerous. I may not be popular for
making this next suggestion but, perhaps RunDisney needs to require anyone
under the age of 10-12 to start in the final corral to prevent some of the
problem races with little kids creates.
It’s dark, they’re short and the combination makes it hard to see them
causing some of us slightly more tunnel-visioned racers to trip over them. The race was crowded as I said, and right at
mile 1 Leah fell and scrapped her knee! This
was particularly bad since we had 47.6 more miles to go in this challenge. She dusted herself off and got back to
it. We finished in a conservative
35:18. Later that day Leah stood up at
work to find out that she could barely put any weight on her ankle as a result
of the tumble. After a frantic trip to
the orthopedic we hoped that she was fixed up enough to make it through the
next 3 days of races!
Day two: Friday 6.2 miles- The final 3 days of races all
started earlier than Thursday so I was up at about 2:30 in the morning. Again, Leah and I parked near each
other. Today we spent our car time in
the morning watching youtube videos on how to use KT tape to stabilize an
ankle. After that we got ready to meet
the gang! We found Gloria, Amy, and
Michelle and made our way toward the corrals.
Today we got smart and used the porto-potts with no line. Leah, Michelle, and I decided to start in C
today, since we were almost late for work on Thursday. C corral was still crowded but we did seem to
have a little more room as the race went on.
We took Thursday pretty easy to test Leah’s ankle. I also was cautious of some of the ground
since it had rained that morning. We walked
all of the boardwalk since it seemed extra slippery on the wood. We also walked in the last half mile or so to
give Leah’s ankle a cool down. We finished
in a 1:20:19 which was a nice easy pace.
Day three: Saturday 13.1 miles- Day 3 started a little off
schedule. Sarah was meeting me at my
house to ride over together but she forgot her bib and had to turn around. While she was doing that I realized that I needed
gas in my car. The gas station on the
corner is right next to a Taco Bell that was still open and had many a drunken
college kid in the back of a pick-up.
That should give you insight on just how early we were up. We made it to Disney still on our time frame
and met up with the group. We took our
Marathonfest before photo and started back on the long hike to the
corrals. Once we were settled into
Corral K, Leslie, a friend of mine I’ve known pretty much my entire life met up
with us. She just had a baby a few weeks
before and was understandably a little undertrained. I told her to stick with us and she would be
ok. We started off comfortably and just
enjoyed the course. Leah has two
mandatory photo stops in the Magic Kingdom; one is on Main Street and the other
is in front of the castle, we don’t stand in line for photos, but we will peel
off to take a quick group shot, and honestly some of those photos are some of
my favorites. At mile 10 people started
to leave us – which is always ok. We just
wanted to finish steady and standing.
Susan left first, then Michelle and Sarah. Since it was Sarah’s first half I’m glad she
went ahead and pushed herself! Leah,
Leslie, and I finished in 2:52:58 – which matched down to the second me and Leah’s
times from the Goofy last year! What a
great way to finish off my 20th half marathon!
Day four: Marathon Day – Sunday 26.2 miles – No matter how
many of these I do, I don’t think they ever will just feel easy. We knew that setting a PR was highly
unlikely, it was too hot, and we had just put 22.4 miles on in the days
before. Instead of worrying about our
time we went into looking to enjoy a marathon as much as one can enjoy a
marathon. We started with a huge group!
Lauren, Dennis, Carolyn, Angela, Brittany, Michelle, Leah, and I stayed
together through Leah’s mandatory photo opportunities and our first bathroom
break. After the bathroom break Lauren
and Dennis took off and finished right around the 5:30 mark – they are ready
for their spring marathons Boston and Tokyo!
The rest of us did a good job of staying together for awhile. Around mile 12.5 Michelle and Brittany hit
the bathrooms and Leah, Carolyn, Angela, and I hopped onto Everest and rode the
ride. This may just be the coolest thing
I’ve ever done during a race. It cooled
us down and gave us a much needed adrenaline rush. Our only mistake was not pausing our watches,
but man it looks like we ran one really fast mile in the middle there! One of the things that made running this
marathon much more bearable was knowing we had people we knew all along the
course. It was easier to think in 2-6
mile chunks of who we should be seeing next.
There are way too many people to name here who were out along the
course, but I am so thankful for all of them.
Michelle and Brittany caught up with us when we stopped to use the
bathrooms around mile 14 and we all stayed together until mile 19. After we left a pit stop stop with Dan and
his wife, it was just Leah, Carolyn and I.
By this point I was grumpy and the sun was really starting to get to
me. Last year the sun wipped me out at
mile 15, so I was glad I was now nearing mile 21. Leah refused to let me slow down and dropped
our interval from 3:1 to 2:1. I know at
least once I whined to Carolyn to stay with me so Leah would have to slow down. We kept up the 2:1’s for a few more miles
before dropping again to 1:1’s. I know I
was not fun to be with at this point but Leah and Carolyn drug me through those
last icky miles. It is the first time
though that we finished a marathon still running a formal interval and not
doing a death march at the end. I know I complained a lot, but I am so happy that Leah made me finish strong! We
finished in 5:55:22, which was 28 minutes faster than last year’s Goofy. After getting ice on our knees and picking up
our last 3 medal (rounding out the week’s total to 6). We settled down in the
runner’s village to wait for all of other friends who were finishing up. This was a great weekend to complete Marathon #5 for me!
As crazy as it sounds this was one of the best and most fun
marathons I’ve ever run. So fun I might
just decide to go and try to be “perfectly Dopey” and run every Dopey race from
here on out.
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