It’s the fourth and final day of the Dopey Challenge… and while we always planned to take the pace easy today, a marathon is a marathon and it’s always hard, especially when it’s the fourth day of racing in a row!
It was cold again this morning and it got colder during the first few miles. We were taking a walk break once per mile but I found this section the worst, as the cold was making me lightheaded and it was just long boring road again.
Once we got into Magic Kingdom at about 10 miles and the sun started to rise, I began to feel better. The fatigue was really kicking in and so I now needed two walk breaks per mile, but I was able to keep this pattern going for the rest of the race (which surprised me, as after yesterday I thought I’d be solidly walking from 20 miles if not before).
We did visit a few of the parks, but again most of the route was road in the middle of nowhere. Disney is big! I found this quite hard, as the parks were good for distraction and the road bits very definitely were not.
We worked hard for a sub-7 finish, which is my second slowest marathon ever. This challenge has been so tough and I’m really proud that we’ve got through it.
Another pitch black race start!
From the start, I treated this challenge like a multiday ultra. What I have learnt from it is that I won’t be doing any multiday ultras in the future! It was an incredible experience and I do want to come back to Disney for other race weekends before too long, but my Dopey is most definitely one and done.
Onto training for the next race now. But I do need a week or two of recovery to start with…
Day three of the Dopey Challenge, and now the hard work begins! While 5k and 10k are comfortable daily distances that we do all the time, a half marathon and a full marathon on back-to-back days constitute the real challenge of this event.
It was much warmer this morning (16ish degrees Celsius, which is normal for Florida nights in January) but it rained heavily while we were waiting to start, so we felt just as cold as the last two mornings! Should have worn a plastic covering – a bit of rain never normally bothers us at that temperature but it hits differently here for some reason.
We took the half marathon very easy, but I am starting to feel extremely fatigued from the cumulative race days. It’s not just the mileage but all the rigmarole around it (runners who do races will be very familiar with this). I am a bit anxious about the marathon as a result, but we’ll take it as easy as we need to, with lots of walk breaks.
Cinderella’s castle was a rare bit of excitement today – the route was a bit dull in general.
It’s the final day of the challenge tomorrow… but in terms of mileage, we’re not even halfway there yet!
Day two of the Dopey Challenge saw us running the 10k!
Knowing the logistics made it easier, and we were a bit more prepared for the cold conditions this morning. The race itself went by fairly quickly again – once you get into Epcot there’s a lot going on to distract you – but I don’t really feel in race shape despite the training. Christmas has left me feeling sluggish and overfull and I felt a bit ill for the first couple of miles today. Hopefully I’ll feel better for the big two races over the weekend, especially as we’re planning a more restful day today.
Nicely warmed up about four miles in!
For day three tomorrow, it starts to get a bit harder, as we press on to the half marathon…
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…
I have reached the stage now where I’m generally comfortable in my sobriety. I don’t have to avoid booze aisles in supermarkets anymore. I am a non-drinker, just as I am a vegetarian. To most extents and purposes, it is a dietary choice.
There are little things that remind me not to be complacent, though. The stressful days when I long for something to take the edge off. The occasional nightmares where I’m blind drunk and out of control. Those dreams are horrible, but they are necessary. They make me remember that I can’t take anything for granted, that I’m only one stupid decision or moment of carelessness away from ruining the wonderful sober life I’ve built.
I don’t look at the online sobriety communities anymore – this is part of my indefinite social media break – as I now feel able to rely on myself and on people around me who understand. But I know they’re there if I need them.
I went to my favourite parkrun for my birthday weekend parkrun and my first performance in my new age category as a VW40-44!
Not that I was banging out a fast time or anything, especially not in the frosty conditions we had this morning (I was just grateful that Jesmond Dene was on). Geth and I took it easy for another 30ish minute one and enjoyed a lovely run round the Dene.
(Well, I say easy, but that hill is always murder on my asthma on cold mornings no matter how slowly I take it!)
Looking a little frozen at the end!
A rare non-parkrunning Saturday next week as there’s something very special going on, but I expect to be on the Moor the week after…
I have started my forties today as I mean to go on – running with friends, eating cake and playing videogames. It has been a wonderful birthday – but in some ways I’ll be celebrating all year, as befits a milestone.
I think, when I am at the end of my life – a long time in the future, I hope – if I am ever asked what the most significant decade for me was, I am certain that I will say it was my thirties.
Here are a couple of pictures of me on the first day of my thirties, 3rd January 2015.
In the morning having cake with family, and then dancing at my birthday party in the evening. I always had a drink in hand; I was overweight and hadn’t gone for a haircut in years; and I was in a lot of chronic pain and very unhappy. Also, that birthday was the last birthday I was allowed to have the correct number of candles on the cake, because my family were starting to get worried about the house burning down.
I was very much still carrying the chaos of my twenties with me. I was in poor health, partly genetic but mostly self-inflicted. I was trying to get a novel published, but I wouldn’t show it to a soul except for agents. I was about to move from Southampton to Newcastle the following month, and I was stressed, because I find moving incredibly stressful. At this point, I had never even been to Newcastle.
Life is so different a decade on.
I have such a changed understanding of my health and my body now. A few months after moving to Newcastle, I started running, and over the years it’s become the most important thing I do every day. Two years later, I decided to take control of my weight and lost five stone via Slimming World. Then another two years after that, I faced up to my alcohol addiction and quit drinking. All of this enabled me to be taken more seriously by doctors, and I finally had diagnoses for my ankylosing spondylitis and my asthma – issues that had affected me for my whole adult life. Daily living is so, so much better now that I am healthy, and I know that the lifestyle I’ve built will enable me to be a healthy and active older adult in the future.
When I turned thirty, I was upset that I hadn’t yet managed to become a published novelist. On the eve of my forties, I am still not a published novelist, and I’m fine with that. I understand now that these things happen when they’re meant to, and the progress I’ve made in my writing over the past ten years means more to me. That progress has, for the large part, come about via being brave enough to share my writing with others – through programming and publishing text adventure games and through reading my poems at poetry nights – and the helpful feedback and affirmation I’ve received through these processes. I still have dreams of being a novelist, and many works in progress, but it will happen in its own time.
When Geth and I moved to Newcastle, I saw it as just another temporary location, as I still very much wanted to return to Edinburgh eventually. I hadn’t really settled well in Southampton, and I didn’t imagine myself ever seeing anywhere other than Edinburgh as ‘home’. But now, Newcastle is absolutely my home, and I see myself living here forever. I had never even visited the city until we did a quick househunting trip three weeks before we moved here, but I have fallen in love with the place. It is where I feel most comfortable now.
Here are a couple of pictures of me from today, the final day of my thirties.
I ran, as usual – today it was a run to the Hard Rock Café for lunch and a souvenir. Then I spent the evening relaxing on my sofa, which is my favourite way to spend an evening. I don’t like going out later in the day, and that’s fine.
I am so excited for my forties. I am so much more confident and sure of myself and happy in my own skin, and I know I will achieve a lot. But it was what I did in my thirties that created the foundation for this confidence. I changed my own life, and I am so proud of myself for doing that.
