Here we are in Disney World, Florida, for the first day of a race weekend that’s been years in the planning!
Geth first started talking about doing the Disney races in 2019, when I did my first London Marathon and he spotted the RunDisney stall at the London expo. At first, he wanted to do the Star Wars Stormtrooper Challenge (a 10k one day followed by a half marathon the next), as he didn’t believe at that point that he would ever run a full marathon. He was going to be turning forty in 2020, and he thought it would be the perfect way to celebrate his milestone birthday. Then 2020 arrived, and the pandemic happened… and plans just slowed down for a while. During that time, those plans morphed into the full Dopey Challenge (four back-to-back days of races: a 5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon) as we became more confident in our running.
It took a long time to get here. But here we are now! For Geth’s 40th birthday trip… in my 40th birthday month.
(He’ll be forty-five this year. We’d better start thinking about his 50th birthday trip now in case we get derailed again!)
We arrived in Florida two days ago as we needed to go to the expo yesterday to pick up our numbers and t-shirts (which was a fun experience in itself!). This morning was the first race morning, and I was glad that the 5k acted as a bit of a trial run for the next few days, as it meant we could see how all the logistics worked without needing to worry about the distance. We’re now set for tomorrow onwards and know what we’re doing.
It was very cold (not what we expected from Florida) and we were shivering at the start – it took us most of the race to warm up. After we were done it was fine though as the queues for the drop bags and buses moved nice and quickly. It just felt like the race itself was gone in a flash and over too soon! I doubt we’ll have that issue as the distances increase…
We continue tomorrow with the 10k for day two!