After the expo on Wednesday, I got some food at my Disney resort and tried to turn in a little early since I had to start getting up basically in the middle of the night the next day. I have to say, while my menu choices were still extremely limited and I'm glad I prepared and took my own snacks with me, Disney has made sure to add more vegetarian options. It seemed like each food station in the cafeteria had at least one vegetarian option. And, since I couldn't eat even some of those, I would just order a meal that had meat on top and ask them to leave it off, which they of course did graciously. And, when I went to pay for my meal, they always worked with me and offered something else for free since I chose to not have the full meal and they didn't have a way to alter the price in the system.
And so it began. Thursday morning (barely morning since we were only a couple hours in but Thursday morning no less) I started out with the 5k which my oldest niece (Hannah) had selected Pluto as the character she thought I should dress up as for the race. Of course, I immediately began to rethink this decision. Usually there are people dressed up everywhere for the Disney races. Somehow, the bus I got on that morning didn't have ANY other people dressed in costume. Luckily when we got to the starting line, there were plenty of people dressed in costume that must have been on earlier buses. It wasn't too hot since it was so early but compared to the snow and single digit temperatures I left behind it felt hot. It was also humid, sticky, and then it started to rain. Knowing that this was only the first day, I went very slow and was careful with my footing. I really didn't want to be the fool that registered for the Dopey Challenge and slipped and hurt themselves during the first race. There were 7,000 people registered for the Dopey Challenge and only about 10,000 ran in the 5k and the 10k, so we knew looking around that we were going to be seeing quite a bit of each other over the next few days. After the race (it was still pretty dark out) Pluto was in finish area to take pictures with. Since I was in my Pluto costume, I felt compelled to wait in the excessively long line. I waited in that line longer than it took me to run my slow and easy 5k. But, it's always worth it. After the race, I took a quick shower and set up shop in my room to get a little bit of work done since it was raining, I was still by myself since my husband wasn't flying down until Friday, and it's a busy time of year for us at work. Again, I grabbed something easy to eat from the cafeteria in my resort and forced myself to turn in early so I could start all over again the next dark morning.
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Friday morning the alarm went off a little earlier as all the remaining race start times were earlier than Thursday's. Today's character was selected by my other niece (Mia). She thought I should dress up as Cinderella, which happens to also be what she for Halloween too. When she saw the picture of me dressed up for the race that day she said she liked it, but why weren't my shoes blue?! The weather on Friday was similar to what it had been on Thursday. Not too warm during the time we were running, but still humid and sticky. Though I don't seem to remember it raining during this race, so if it did, it must have been a very light sprinkle. And, I was right. There were so many familiar faces from the day before and you kind of felt like you were running with 6,999 of your friends. Again, I took it slow and easy, and just enjoyed my surroundings, the sights, the other runners, and the experience. Once I finished I hopped on the bus and headed back to the resort to shower up and get a little more work done before my husband arrived.
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When he got to the hotel we headed over to Downtown Disney to grab some lunch and walk around a little. We wanted to make sure we ate early because we had dinner reservations that night to get some delicious sushi. A couple days before Lee flew down, it had been exactly ten years since we met at a Caps game. I can't believe it's been ten years since we met and it was only a week or so after that when we went to another game together on what we now know as our first date. So, to celebrate this I had reservations for us to go to Kona Cafe at the Polynesian Resort; we put on real clothes for once (it's very rare for me to be in anything other than work clothes or gym gear these days); and had a fabulous dinner. This was my first time using sushi as my meal before a race. I had tested it out during training and it seemed to work okay and was a better option for me than eating pasta (which I'm not supposed to eat, I have to minimize gluten and there are very few restaurants that have gluten free pasta) multiple days in a row. I did splurge during the meal though. I had heard the bread pudding at O'hana (the restaurant next to Kona Cafe) was amazing. Unfortunately, there wasn't really anything at O'hana that I could eat and still feel okay to get up and run a half-marathon the next morning. But, I had also heard that if you ask your server nicely, sometimes you can score bread pudding while having dinner at Kona even though it's not on the menu. Thankfully our server didn't even hesitate when we asked he said "of course, I can make that happen" and then brought out the biggest serving of bread pudding I have ever seen in my life. And it was exactly what I needed to top off my sushi dinner. Lee had said "let's order two desserts" before seeing the serving size and once it was brought out, he was thankful I told him no. We didn't even finish the one serving between the two of us. Then it was off to bed.
Saturday morning when the alarm went off in the middle of the night again, I started getting tired of getting up so early. But, then I remembered all the reasons I was running the events and how amazing it would be the next day when I was done. Off to the bus again, this time there was no costume and Lee was with me riding to the race where he would just hang out until I was done. This day was hot. There's no other way to describe it. Hot and humid. I don't think it rained but I don't know if I would have been able to tell with how sweaty I was. I knew my limitations and that I had to be smart and go slow today to make sure I felt good the next day for the Marathon. So, I did that, I went even slower than the two previous days, I stopped to stretch at water stations, I stopped and waited in line for pictures with characters on the course, and it was fun. It was my slowest half-marathon by about 15 minutes, but it was a ton of fun. After finishing today's race, I knew I had this. I felt like I was already done with the Marathon even though I hadn't even started yet. Mentally I was at the finish line. Physically, looking at it from a mathematical standpoint, I wasn't even half-way through all the miles I would do by the end of the following day, but that didn't matter. I knew I could do it.
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Saturday afternoon/evening, we had dinner reservations at Portobello an Italian restaurant at Downtown Disney, where we would be joined by Tracy and Donald (my good friends that let me stay with them earlier in the week). There were a few minor issues with our server at dinner, but it serves as an entertaining story and memory now. I had made sure to make our dinner reservations this night for even earlier, because I knew I had to get to bed and get some quality sleep Saturday night. Not only did I have the Marathon on Sunday; we were also going to the parks after I was done running. I had to make sure I had enough energy at this point to run 26.2 miles and then walk all over the parks the rest of the day and stand in lines. We did make a short stop at the Concierge to see if there was any way to link an old ticket I had to my magic band so we could take advantage of the fastpass+ feature and get our fast passes for the next day loaded onto our magic bands so we wouldn't have to worry about lines or fast passes being gone by the time we got to the parks. It took a lot of effort on the employee at the concierge desk, but he kept trying until he was able to get it set up for me. I'm so thankful he did that for me because it made Sunday that much more enjoyable for us.
Sunday morning came and I didn't really know what to think. I was definitely over the idea of getting up so early every day, but it was my last day of getting up so early so I felt pretty happy. On the bus ride over to the start line, someone behind me kept coughing and I just knew that I was going to end up sick after this race. Between the amount of sick people around me and my immune system being taken down so much from all the running, it was pretty much inevitable. I talked to a girl that was running her first marathon in my corral while we waited for it to be time for our wave to start and a few of my fellow Dopey Challengers and before I knew it, it was time to start. The good thing about there being so many people around me that were also doing the Dopey Challenge is there were other people that were using the walk/run interval method from early on in the race. I felt great. My IT band had been cooperating pretty good so far through the other races. I knew it would hurt by the end of the marathon, but again, I knew I could finish and I wasn't worried. Around mile 14 my knee was starting to tweak and I decided I should walk for most of the remainder of the race. I texted Lee and told him what my plan was and suggested he go back to the hotel and hang out so he wouldn't have to stand around for so long. Of course he wouldn't listen to me and insisted on staying. Being stubborn and feeling like I was lazy, of course I didn't keep walking like I had intended. I started doing my walk/run intervals again and the knee pain had either gone away or becoming numb by around mile 17. The miles just started flying by at that point. I still felt great. I could tell my nutrition was struggling because of all of my restrictions, but I just made sure I stayed hydrated and ate a delicate balance of my supplements and the bananas that were at the aid stations. Eating just enough to keep me going and not mess with my digestion too much.
The next thing I knew, the finish line was right in front of me and I was giving Mickey an overzealous high five. It was over 48.6 miles had come and gone. I could finally get rid of all the wristbands I had collected over the past couple days. I collected my marathon medal and talked to one of the volunteers that said I looked too energetic and should start the race over. Then I followed the line to get my Goofy medal and immediately after that my Dopey medal. I met up with Lee, took a quick picture with the medals, did a little stretching, then hopped on the bus. I had a fast pass for Rock 'n' Roller Coaster I had to get to! I showered, took more pictures, this time with all six medals, and we still had enough time to go get some food at Epcot before heading over to Hollywood Studios for our 2pm roller coaster date. My first meal of choice? Macaroni and Cheese (which was the best mac and cheese I've ever had) and Apple Streusel (not my favorite, I didn't even finish it and was tempted to let the duck have it). I'm not one of those people that wears my medal around after the race, but, I did proudly wear my Dopey Challenge race shirt all day. I never got sore, never had any knee pain, I felt fantastic.
The entire experience is something I will never forget. This race series meant a lot of different things to me. It meant all of the things every race has always meant to me (helping others, raising awareness, staying active and fit, continually pushing myself and others to be better). But this one had more to it. It was something that when I decided to do it, I really didn't know if I'd be able to run all the events successfully. I didn't know if my doctors were going to say I was okay to run these races I invested so much in. It was the first event I ran in since being matched with a beautiful girl named Molly through a wonderful organization (I Run 4; http://www.whoirun4.com/). Having her virtually by my side was a new experience for me and it made everything so much more meaningful and gave me a whole new inspiration. All of these things combined made it a really special event for me to complete.
The only down side is I was right, on the way home, the sickness set in. I got the flu from someone in that huge crowd of people and was sick for two weeks. I went to my doctor just to make sure I wasn't feeling like this as a result from running or the nutrition issues I had and she said "Nope, definitely not. You're free to keep doing your crazy running, this has nothing to do with it."
Someone already asked me if I would be doing the Dopey Challenge in 2015. I'm still considering what my response should be. If money and time were not an issue, I'd do it without giving it a second thought. It was a great experience and I never hit a wall in all the races. But, we have a lot of other trips planned in the near future that are going to be monopolizing our travel fund and the timing of the races is tough with my work schedule. It's very difficult to find enough hours to train properly and take the time off to travel to the events. I would definitely say it's a possibility that I'm strongly considering though, if I can find a way to balance everything. :)
Thanks for the recap. Looks like you had an amazing experience. I need to add the Dopey Challenge to my list of races to run. A 5k, 10k, Half Marathon, and Marathon in four consecutive days makes you a rock star in my books.
ReplyDeleteThank you! It was definitely an amazing experience that I highly recommend. The most difficult part was finding the time for all of the training runs while still keeping up with the rest of life. Registration opens in April and it sold out in a couple hours this year, so mark your calendar! :)
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