This crazy marathon thing

Well, kids, here it is- Disney Marathon Weekend! Around February of 2007 I randomly decided I wanted to run the marathon at DisneyWorld. I'd never run more than 4 miles at a time, but so what!?

Decisions, decisions:

Here's the deal- Disney has a half marathon on Saturday (13.1 miles) and a full on Sunday (26.2).

When you finish the half, you get a Donald medal. When I was a tweener, my family took a trip to Disney. My step-father bought us all Donald t-shirts and gave our name as "Duck" at the podium at Chef Mickeys. (Yep, humiliating.) As a result, I have some attachment to Donald.

But, when you finish the full, you get a Mickey medal. This year is the 15th anniversary so there is a super-secret medal they won’t let anyone see. Hello, dilemma! I want the super-secret medal too!

Guess what? You can get both medals. It’s called the Goofy Challenge- and yes, you get a Goofy medal too. Two days, three medals! I don’t even like Goofy particularly, but I do like bling so there you have it—

I’M GOING GOOFY!

That all sounded great around February… now, it’s sounding a bit, you know, long.

Training:

You look at books on training like Marathoning for Mortals, and you think, "eh, I can handle this." And you can, but it takes more time and effort than you can possibly imagine. You start off by running 3-5 miles 3-4 times a week, and add a LR (long run, don't you know) over the weekend. In theory I started off doing two LRs on the weekend to get a feel for back-to-back runs in preparation for Goofy. And yes, I got a feel for the back-to-backs. They hurt. I dropped the shorter LR on Saturday.

Did I mention you build up to 18-20 mile LRs? Did I mention the LRs all fell right around Thanksgiving and Christmas?! That was really convenient, because you know, you've got nothing better to do between Thanksgiving and Christmas than spend all your time running and running and running...

Coach Harry has been on every LR with me in his stroller. The baby who can't even handle sitting still for a meal at Chick-fil-A can sit in a stroller for 4 hours with a bag of Skittles. It's an enigma, but whatever. I finally learned to put him in footy pj's if it was cold out- otherwise he keeps taking off his shoes, and little old ladies glare at me. Recently, Emma tossed aside her training wheels and has accompanied me on her bike. Good thing we live in a small town because with a somewhat steering-challenged bike rider and me and Harry, we take up the whole road.



Would you believe I've run over 500 miles in preparation for this weekend? That's not really hard-core, lots of people do more, but I'm still pretty amazed I stuck with it so long. I'm in "taper" mode now- you slow down considerably, so that you can go into the race fresh. As a side effect, you become convinced you can't even run a mile...

We are all making the journey to Disney. The races start around 6 a.m. "What?!" you say, "there's no way you're getting up that early!" And you're right-- I have to be on a bus both days around 3:30 a.m!! Two good points- 1.) I can't possibly be nervous that early in the morning; 2). I may very well be back to the hotel before my peeps have finished breakfast! Hold up- that second point only applies to the half!

In case you're worried, I did run a half marathon last month in preparation. It was a nice course in Jacksonville. I was soooo bored. But, there were no Disney Parks to run through, and no characters to take pictures with, etc. Yep, bringing my camera, because nothing says pretty like a running picture!

Emma and I did a "run" together in October at Disney. Emma's idea of running is walking, so it was pretty sweet! They had a race that was twice as long at the same time- that's why there are people who you can tell are really running in the background! They've covered a lot more distance than us.



I found a group of fellow minded Disney runners on the internet. I know, I know... internet friends. But really, I wouldn't have made it this far without their encouragement, so I have to give credit to my WISHers. Go WISH team!!

If you have any interest in tracking me,

Half: http://disneyworldsports.disney.go.com/dwws/en_US/marathon/events/detail?name=Marathon2008HalfMarathonLiveResultsDetailPage

Full: http://disneyworldsports.disney.go.com/dwws/en_US/marathon/events/detail?name=MarathonResultsDetailPage

Plug in my name. Don't be concerned if I suddenly stop moving. I'm probably taking pictures. Oh, and on the day of the full, I may very well stop for a ride at one of the parks or maybe lunch... you never know.

OK, I'm going back to obsessing over packing details now...