Andy Gapin

For the third January in a row, my wife and I paid a visit to Mickey and friends down at Walt Disney World. This year, we went down specifically to run the Goofy Challenge, but I already wrote about that. While our trip was shorter than in past years, I still managed to take a lot of photos. With this being our third trip, I already had a ton of photos of the parks so I knew I could skip a lot and just focus on things I either haven’t photographed or that I knew I could photograph differently.

The first part of week two was spent in Disney World. I thought that would make getting tons of great photos easy, but we took a short trip and felt very rushed to do everything we wanted to do. Sadly, that didn’t leave a lot of time to set up and compose many photos. I came home with a lot of snapshots, but not a lot of actual photos. I also found myself scrambling at night to dump my photos to our iPad so I could go through them and pick a photo. I have a few photo editing apps that are decent, even for RAW files, but sometimes it’s still a little hard to get the photo just right on there. Still, despite all that, when I did have a minute or two to stop and take photos, I found myself trying to do different things than I would normally.

The last photo is of my sister-in-law who hates when I take photos of her. Naturally, this means I try to take as many as possible. This one was at a big family dinner at my wife’s parents’ house. They were sitting on stools next to each other and she put her head on my wife’s shoulder for moment. I happened to have my camera in my hand already and snapped the shot real quickly.

One half marathon, one marathon, two days, four Disney parks, 39.3 miles, three medals, three shirts. It’s called the Goofy Challenge. It’s not for everyone and it’s certainly not for people who don’t like running.

If you had asked me a year and a few days ago if I thought I’d ever run a marathon and a half marathon in the same weekend, there’s no way you would have gotten a yes out of me. No way. I wouldn’t have even giving you a yes for running a marathon by itself. But, last year, my wife and I ran the Disney World Half Marathon and spent the rest of our trip in Disney seeing plenty of other people walking around with three medals around their necks, I call them “clankers.” It was at that point that we realized if they could do it, we could do it. It took months and some going back and forth before we finally committed and signed up for the Goofy Challenge, but we went for it.

Now, my wife and I aren’t always the smartest people in the world. We hadn’t run a full marathon at the time and were currently beginning our training for the Philadelphia Marathon, which fell just a month and a half before the Goofy Challenge. That’s not a lot of time to recover from your first marathon and then up the training for an even bigger challenge. But we signed up and booked a trip to Disney, we had to do it…or at least try.

Training didn’t go as well as it could of, in fact, between Philly and Disney, the longest run either of us did was 16 miles. Things could have been worse, but I really didn’t feel like either of us had built up enough stamina for the challenge. Time was hard to come by and the tendinitis that used to be in my left ankle had moved over to my right one, not to mention the fact that my knees hadn’t felt right since Philly. And to top off the fact that we had signed up to run 39.3 miles in one weekend, we also had to have enough left in our legs to walk around Disney for a few days and enjoy a “vacation.”

However, for as stupid as we were in signing up for this thing in the first place, we were smart in setting our goals. This was just for the sake of doing it. We weren’t going to try to run for time and we were going to run both races together. My wife and I don’t normally run races together, so this was going to be new for both of us, but we figured we could help each other through.

Half Marathon

The plan for the half marathon was to take things super slow and just get to the finish without working our legs too much. By this point, we’ve had a few half marathons under our belts and having just spent the last six months training for a marathon, 13.1 miles wasn’t worrisome at all. Plus, we knew the course from last year. Our biggest worry was just trying to keep ourselves slow. Very slow.

We woke up at 2:45am and got ourselves ready and out the door to catch the bus over to the start area. The weather was chilly, and still getting colder, but we knew it would be like this from last year. As we made our way over to our starting corral, we tried to prepare ourselves mentally for what we were about to start. We had no idea how our bodies were going to respond to such a goofy challenge.

The race kicked off with a blast of fireworks and we were on our way, trying to keep a slow pace. The start was very crowded and trying to find our own space to run wasn’t easy. On top of that, I had to pee right off the bat. I stopped at a porta potty and told my wife to continue without me, I’d catch up. This seemed like the longest pee of my life as I stood there thinking about how much extra energy I was going to burn trying to catch up to my wife. As soon as I was done, I sprinted down the course to catch up to my wife. The people around must have thought I was an idiot running that fast that early in the race, but since I’m used to running a half marathon at a pace three or four minutes per mile faster than we were planning on doing, it wasn’t a problem for me to run at my normal pace to catch up. In fact, my legs loved it, they wanted to keep it up, but I didn’t give in. I caught up to my wife and we continued on our way.

From there, we spent most of the race just trying to slow ourselves down. No matter how much we tried, our pace kept creeping faster and we’d have to make a strong effort to slow ourselves. down. The worst area of the course for this, without a doubt, was Magic Kingdom. This is the most exciting part of the course. There’s a ton of energy as you come down Main Street, through Tomorrowland and Fantasyland, and through Cinderella’s Castle. We picked up a little speed, but for the most part we were able to keep it under control.

After Magic Kingdom, the half marathon course gets pretty boring for a while. You run down a back street and a highway for a while as you make your way back to Epcot. We lost a few minutes when my wife needed to take a quick bathroom break in one of the porta potties, but she was quick. As we made our way into Epcot for the last mile, things felt pretty good. Once the finish line was in site, we grabbed hands and crossed together at 2:15:54. Almost a minute per mile slower than my wife’s slowest time, so we were both feeling pretty good and knew we hadn’t burned up too much energy or stamina.

Marathon

The marathon, the biggie. With just one marathon under our belts, we didn’t know how we were going to hold up through 26.2 miles after having put 13.1 miles on our legs just 24 hours prior. Again, we got up around 3am to make our way over to the starting area. The temperature was a little bit warmer feeling, but not by much. We sat for a few minutes in the corral to rest our legs while other runners were stretching and warming up. Saving the energy seemed more important than anything else at this point. Since I moved back to start in the C corral (there were eight total corrals) with my wife, we had a bit of a walk anyway when it was time for our corral to move up to starting line so that served as our warm up.

This time when the race started, we tried to take it even easier. We were on the other side of the road this time which had a little more room on it. I, again, had to stop and pee within the first mile, but this time I didn’t use a porta potty, I just ran off into the woods. Unlike for the half marathon, I didn’t burn energy sprinting back up to my wife. I picked up my pace a little and just slowly and steadily caught back up to her.

The marathon course quickly differentiates itself from the half marathon by taking runners right into Epcot after just a couple miles. At this point, my wife needed to make her first bathroom stop. There was a bit of a line this time, but again, she was quick in there and we were on our way having only lost a few minutes.

We entered the park at the front and ran around Spaceship Earth with the course separating into two halves, allowing runners to go down either side. From there, the course makes a left turn into the World Showcase and exits down a back road just after passing Mexico. After exiting around the back, the course loops back around near the starting line, which was already halfway broken down, and heads towards Magic Kingdom on the same roads the half marathon comes back on. Instead of going to the right of the Speedyway, though, the full marathon took us along the left. This section, between Epcot and Magic Kingdom, is a bit boring, but Disney tries to keep an ample amount of entertainment going on the sides of the course.

At this point, we had hit the halfway point for the Goofy Challenge. All downhill from here, or so I tried to reason.

As we made our way towards Magic Kingdom, we were feeling okay, but weary about the big distance between Magic Kingdom and Animal Kingdom. But for now, we had a good pace going and were just a bit faster than we wanted to be. I feared that coming down Main Street in Magic Kingdom would pick us up a bit more than we wanted, but that was still a couple miles away.

As we made our way towards Magic Kingdom, the course eventually merged back with where the half marathon had taken us through the park. We entered down Main Street and did our best to keep things steady and find our space to run in the massive crowd of runners that bottleneck coming through the park. After following through Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, Cinderella’s Castle, Liberty Square, and Frontierland, we made our way out of the park to the left of Splash Mountain. We escaped without picking up our pace and burning excess energy.

This was the part we dreaded, probably even more than the part of the race after mile 20. This was the start of the roughly six mile trek to Animal Kingdom. This portion of the course doesn’t have much to see other than the few characters Disney had out to take photos with. By the time we hit the marathon halfway point, I was feeling good, but my wife was starting to fatigue. I tried encouraging her as much as I could, but as we kept getting closer to Animal Kingdom, she kept getting more and more worried. As we came along miles 14 and 15, I started to feel some fatigue in my legs, but things were still manageable.

As we started to get closer to Animal Kingdom, some of the animals were out on the side of the course and this started off the boost that we needed from the park. Once we made our way into the park, the energy grew and carried us through Asia and DinoLand USA to the front of the park.

Three parks done and I was actually feeling pretty monster now.

We just had a few miles to go until Hollywood Studios. As we curved around the Animal Kingdom bus stops, we hit mile 17 and then 18 came quickly. By this time in Philly, I was fatiguing hard and working out my strategy to make it to the finish line. I was weighing the best time to drop off from the pacer I was running with and that time happened by mile 18.5. But things were different this time, my legs felt great and I had energy, lots of it. I knew we were approaching the point in the race where things can fall apart in the blink of an eye, but I knew I was feeling good now and that was all that mattered. I don’t know what the time was at this point, but I’m pretty sure by now I had been running for longer (time-wise) than I ever had in my life.

Unfortunately, my wife was not in the same kind of shape I was in. Since running with her is already a much slower pace for me, I wasn’t putting my body through as much, but we were only running a little slower than she’s used to for a long race like this so it was much harder on her body. These were dark times for her. She had a blister on her toe pop that nearly took her down. She screamed in pain and seemed like she was about to throw in the towel. I’ve never seen her in pain like that before, but she soldiered on as I did my best to reassure her that she could and would make it. Still, I could tell that she was tiring quickly. I had been gulping down energy gels and sport beans for the last five miles, but she didn’t want them. By now, I knew she needed something so I convinced her to eat the chocolate gel she had in her SPI belt. With eight more miles to go, I knew it would kick in when she really needed it.

Unfortunately, the temperature was rising quickly now. We had been taking water at almost every stop since the halfway point so we were hydrated enough, but we were starting to feel the effect of the sun on us.

Mile 21 got a bit rough for my wife and she started feeling the need for another bathroom stop. We, luckily, weren’t far from a porta potty and she was able to stop. Now, she was really fighting to keep things going, but once she was able to hit the bathroom, things started to pick up a little for her.

As we turned into Hollywood Studios, we hit the 22nd mile marker, which pretty much marked the homestretch. From now on, the rest of the course was lined with people, no more dead zones.

There was a huge burst of energy as we entered into the park. Both of us sucked this energy in and picked things up massively. We dropped from around an 11:10 mile to closer to an 8:30-9 minute mile. The combination of the bathroom break, the energy gel finally kicking in, and all the energy from the park transformed my wife from struggling to keep it going all to a running machine. She looked fresh, like she had just started the race. As we made our way through Hollywood Studios, we started passing other runners like nobody’s business. Runners that had been near us all race or had passed us a while back quickly ended up behind us.

We both were feeling great and reaping the reward for keeping things so slow in the 35 miles behind us. Hollywood Studios was over in a flash. We entered in the back of the park and ran through part of the Backlot Tour, down Streets of America, up Commissary Lane, and turned right onto Hollywood Boulevard towards the front of the park. After exiting the park, we made the sharp left to head down along the river to the Boardwalk Resort. Again, tons of people lining the side of the course. Things got tight here, but we squeezed our way through.

As we made our way onto the Boardwalk, we had tons of momentum and we were flying as we passed the marker for mile 24. We were almost there and nothing was going to stop us now.

We followed the course back into Epcot by the UK pavilion. All that was left was a lap around the World Showcase and then to make our way to the front of the park. The counties were flying by us and it felt like we were running on fresh legs. By the time we exited into Future World, we’d passed hundreds of runners since marker for mile 22. It was like we were fast-forwarding the end of the race.

Finally, after wrapping around Spaceship Earth again, we could see the finish line. We stopped passing people, grabbed hands, and made our way across the line at 4:58:16. We were only 21 minutes slower than my wife’s time in Philly and considering we had run a half marathon the day before and stopped for two bathroom breaks, that’s not bad.

Overall stuff

The Goofy Challenge sounds intense. And it is, it’s a lot of miles, but what I learned this weekend is that if you take it easy, really easy, you can do it. And you can still enjoy a vacation after doing it. Of all the long races I’ve done (1 marathon and 3 half marathons before this), I felt the best after this. My legs weren’t very sore and my ankles didn’t hurt. I could walk pretty well. My biggest issue after finishing was just that my feet were sore (that continued for two days). Other than that, I really felt great. Even my ankles, which have been constant problems for me for almost a year and a half now, were completely fine. I did some preemptive icing on them right after finishing, but they never started to hurt.

Throughout the course of the rest of the day and trip, I really didn’t feel like I had just run a marathon and a half. I was impressed with us.

For me, the biggest change from any other races I’ve run is just the difference in running at a slower pace. It’s a really different experience. At a 10-11 minute mile, the course is much more crowded. Things only cleared out so much for us throughout the entire 39.3 miles. At any given point, there were always a few people within a 10 foot radius. At a 7-8 minute pace, races are much different, they clear out. Unless you have someone running with you, you’re much more alone, with the nearest people 15-20 feet away from you. There’s also a lot more conversation from the people around when you’re running slower. Maybe it’s because more people run with friends at that pace, but there were groups of people all over the place that seemed to be running together. At this pace, water stops are a complete mess, there are people and cups everywhere.

Additionally, running at a slower pace gives you time to enjoy the course. I’m used to flying through courses as fast as I can while focusing on breathing properly, keeping an eye on the condition of my body, and keeping myself right at the upper limit of a sustainable pace. I don’t normally notice much going on around me aside from what I need to in order to protect my safety. At an 11-minute mile, I was taking in all the things Disney had on the sides of the course. There were dozens of characters out, marching bands, etc. I even got to enjoy the parks in a different way.

I find the Marathon Weekend events to be a great experience from beginning to end. The races are fun and the courses are unlike any other courses you’ll ever run. Not to mention the fact that, despite the races starting at 5:40am, they’re very well organized. The Goofy Challenge is definitely something I want to do again, but I think I’d also throw in the 5k as well. I don’t know if my wife and I want to make a trip down next year for our fourth January Disney trip in a row, but it’s the 20th anniversary of the marathon, so I’d really like to. If she does both races again, I think I’d do them with her again, but if she decides not to do Goofy again, I might try running for a time. Maybe both races in under five hours combined.

The biggest downside to doing something like Goofy is if you’re trying to also do a full trip to the parks as well. You lose a lot of time because of the races. You have to get to bed before the parks even close on both nights and by the time you’re showered and ready to hit the parks after each race, you’ve lost a good portion of your day, especially after the marathon. We thought we could do four days in the parks, including the race days, but we really felt pressed for time. In the end, we did all the highlights and the things we wanted, but adding an extra day would have made the trip more enjoyable as a whole.

Now what

Now, with the Goofy Challenge done and two marathons under my belt, what are my goals? First thing I’m doing is taking a couple weeks off to rest my ankles. They don’t hurt now, but I want to make sure they’re in decent shape. After that, it’s time to start training again. I’ve got the RU Unite Half Marathon at Rutgers in April, but as long as training goes well, I’ll be doing another marathon after that. I’m looking to qualify for Boston in the Spring so I can run next year. It’s going to mean a lot of training, but as long as my ankles feel good in two weeks, I won’t have lost much from where I am right now. If training is going well, I’m going to shoot for a time closer to 1:25:00 at the half marathon and a marathon for May or June.

Running the Boston Marathon is my main goal right now, but after I qualify for that, my next goal is to get under three hours. Since I have to run under 3:05:00 to qualify for Boston, getting under three hours, at that point, should be attainable. You’d think.

UPDATE: My wife posted her recap as well.

Finally, here is the rest of Disney, a combination of photos from ESPN Wide World of Sports, Wilderness Lodge, Downtown Disney, and more.

I’ve got some Magic Kingdom photos for you right here…

Some Epcot photos!

Alright, so it took me almost a month and a half to fully finish up my photos from Disney this year, but there were about 2500 to go through! Everything is now edited, tagged, rated, and…whatever else I do to my photos. I won’t go into making excuses for taking so long to finish up, but to be fair, I did post photos on Facebook a couple weeks ago before I even started tagging them.

I’m going to be posting a somewhat smaller set of photos here and I will be doing it over the span of five posts, one for each park and one for miscellaneous stuff.

To start, here are the photos from Animal Kingdom. Many of these were taking with my new Canon 70-200 f/4 L USM. These are really the only shots I’ve taken with it so far, actually.

Oh boy, half marathon number two. I clearly remember thinking to myself during the last few miles of my first one that I would never do that to myself again. However, it’s become apparent to me that long races are similar to childbirth in that they both must trigger the same chemical in the brain that makes you forget the pain and want to do it again. For people who have been doing this kind of thing for longer than just a couple years and who have run more long races, this must already be an accepted fact, unless maybe I’m alone in this feeling.

Anyway, once the fiancée and I found out that our group trip to Disney World just so happened to span Disney’s Marathon Weekend, we knew what the deal was. This needed to happen. Once we were signed up, we started a long training process. We knew that we’re both the kind of people that don’t know how to just run slowly and enjoy the scenery, we both run for time and are constantly trying to improve that time. With that in mind, we knew that we’d to really have to up our stamina so that we could run hard for 13.1 miles after three full days of walking around Disney and with another three and a half more days of the same following the race. Unfortunately, the four months of training we did leading up to the race was littered with injuries for both of us, more so for the fiancée than myself, but my ankle has been in bad shape for four months now. With all of the injuries, we didn’t get to do the training we wanted to do, but somehow we did it.

I guess I’ll talk about the course first. The race starts outside of Epcot and takes runners towards Magic Kingdom. There’s a lot of open road running for a little while, but eventually, the course leads runners into a crazy path through Magic Kingdom. Once you enter the park, you’re right on Main Street and there are people cheering everywhere. It’s intense and it’s loud, the adrenaline starts pumping like crazy here. The race continues into Tomorrowland and then around through Fantasyland. To exit Fantasyland, it’s a run right through Cinderella’s Castle. After Cinderella’s Castle, the course goes through Frontierland, but skips Adventureland. Instead, runners are taken out of the park by Splash Mountain and start the trek back to Epcot along some dark roads (the sun still isn’t up yet, but more that later) that don’t have a lot going on. Here it’s easy to lose a some of that adrenaline that was pumping through Magic Kingdom. There are random cheer spots and DJs that help with that though though. At one point the course double back on itself as it gets a little closer to Epcot. Here, I was able to see the last wave of runners going by in the opposite direction only a couple of miles into the race. It was kind of cool to see the very end of the pack and the cleanup crews right behind them.

The conclusion of the race takes the runners right into Epcot and around Spaceship Earth. Runners head into Epcot and do a 180 around the Christmas tree at the entrance to the pathway around the World Showcase Lagoon. With less than half a mile left here, it’s time for the final push to the finish line. The course goes down the other side of Spaceship Earth and out into the parking lot for a huge finishing area with bleachers and tons of people cheering.

Even though the half marathon only hits two of the parks, it’s a great course. The full marathon course is even better and hits all four parks, but none of that for us…this trip.

Okay, so with the course out of the way, let’s get to how I did.

The race starts bright (read: dark) and early at 5:35am. Not only is the sun still not up yet, but about 90% of the race was in the dark for me. With the race being this early, we had to get up at 2:45am to get dressed and catch a bus over to the starting area. The bus drop off was about a twenty minute walk away from the start so we needed plenty of time. We made sure to call it an early night the day before and tried to get in bed by 7:30, but I think I only mustered about three hours of sleep. Luckily adrenaline took over and the lack of sleep didn’t feel like too much of an issue. Surprisingly.

The race had eight waves of runners spaced six minutes apart, I was in the first thanks to an ambitious goal and a decent first half marathon time of 1:47:11. Once I got up to my starting coral, I could already feel a little soreness in my feet from being on them constantly for the three days before…and my right knee hurt which was a little worrisome since that’s generally the one that doesn’t give me problems. I tried not to worry about it too much though, I just needed to get through the 13.1 miles ahead of me.

The air was also pretty chilly. I ran the race in shorts and a t-shirt, but it was only about 50 out and I didn’t bring any throw-away clothes so standing around waiting for the race to start wasn’t very pleasant. I tried to warm up as best I could while the pre-race stuff was going on on the stage in front of me.

The race started off with a blast of fireworks and we were off. There were a lot of people around, but the road was wide enough that it wasn’t hard at all to get around people and find my own space to run. While I had read a few descriptions of the race before that said some spots get crowded, I never felt like I had to fight for my space. The beginning of any race seems to be a big struggle for me still as I try to find my pace while getting around people, I have a bad habit of starting out too fast because of it. This time I did a better job than normal, my first mile time was 7:22/mile which was my average pace in my training runs. From here, I kicked it up to about under 7 minutes/mile for a few miles. Probably more than I needed to, but I was able to keep the pace without feeling like I was pushing too hard.

It wasn’t long into the race before my feet felt legitimately sore. As much as I love my Vibram Five Fingers and as much as they’ve really helped me become a better runner, I probably could have used a little cushioning. The soreness mostly came and went throughout the race. My ankle proved to provide me with more pain than my feet did, but again, that came and went. The worst thing for my ankle was the curves in the road. Many of the turns in the course are along on and off ramps which are banked quite a bit. Not being able to land my foot with my ankle completely straight felt awful. I faced the same issue while training when turning at street corners (did I mention that my ankle pain started four months ago and I’ve been running on it since?). I tried to suck it up as much as I could though. I’ve been planning on seeing a doctor and taking a few weeks off so I knew that I just needed my ankle to get me through one last run before I could let it heal. I wasn’t going to hold back now.

When the course took me into Magic Kingdom, I was a little tired, I was keeping a 7:04 pace at this point, but I got a huge pick me up from all of the people and the cheering through the park. It was wonderful. I also felt kind of like I was doing a photo shoot since there was a photographer every ten feet on both sides for a while. This was kind of awesome and I tried to pose for as many of them as I could as I went by them. Just for fun.

Magic Kingdom was a great mid-race boost of adrenaline, but having read about the course before, I knew I was in for a few miles of nothingness after that so I tried to mentally prepare myself for that.

Throughout the quieter and darker roads, I just kept on pushing myself to keep my pace. I slipped a little, but not much. My pace only lost a few seconds. If my feet weren’t in such bad shape, I think I could have stayed stronger through this section and actually picked things up instead of slipping a little. It really wasn’t so much my ankle here as it was the bottoms of my feet…though that’s not to say that I didn’t entertain the idea of stopping at the medical tent for a quick ankle taping in the 11th mile.

As we approached Epcot again, I was dreading the final hill which I was able to see coming for a few minutes before I got to it. It looked long, but surprisingly, my legs motored up it and sped around a few other runners. This was great a great pick me up for the end of the race.

At this point, I knew the finish line was coming up soon and, once I hit the 12th mile marker, I picked it up a little. I started pushing myself here but I was losing steam quickly. I just kept throwing what I had at course and knew I was getting close to the finish. Once I did the turn around at the Christmas tree at the World Showcase, I knew it was almost over. As I exited the park, I could see the finish line coming up and did one final push to the finish, but it wasn’t as big of a push as I normally do. At this point, I could see the clock ticking and knew I had rocked the race so I decided there was no need to really go for broke to shave for a couple more seconds.

I crossed the finish line at 1:33:54 clock time and 1:33:05 after actually crossing the start line. My goal was 1:35 so I was super elated. I had a HUGE smile on my face as I crossed the line and that smile stayed there for a long time after finishing. I was the 260th finisher out of 27,000 runners, but someone in a wave after me finished in a shorter time so my final place was 261. I will gladly take that.

This was such a great race. I really loved it and even though I was a bit sore from it, I felt insanely better than I did after my first half marathon. I could walk and kept no real downtime between the race and going back out for a day in the park. I actually kind of miss the race. I want to do it again, like right now.

The fiancée finished in 2:03:45 which was a little slower than her first half marathon, but insanely better than she hoped for. She suffered much worse injuries than I did and barely got any training in at all for the race. She still wasn’t fully healed up by race day and it had gotten to the point where she really just hoped to finish. All things considered, I think she’s a damn trooper and that’s a great time for her.

After the race, we wore our Donald medals around the park all day and kept a pretty big high going. Just like when we had our “just engaged” buttons on for our trip last year, we got tons of congratulations from people. On Sunday, we spent a few minutes watching part of the full marathon through Animal Kingdom which really just made me wish I was running that too.What we saw was one of the last waves of runners coming by at around mile 16, but it was still fun to watch because these were the runners that wore costumes and ran onto rides as they’d go by them. Some of these runners even congratulated us when they saw our medals for the half marathon. I thought they were crazy, but Disney’s Marathon Weekend definitely has a feel and sense of camaraderie unlike any other race I’ve ever run. I really loved this.

The biggest surprise of the weekend was just how many people did the Goofy Challenge which is both the half and the full marathon and nets you the Donald medal, a Mickey medal, and a Goofy medal. This seemed insane to me, but it seemed like a few thousand people most have done it. While it appeared that many of those people did more of a jog/power walk for one or both of the races, this is still pretty impressive.

We’ve decided that we have to do the Goofy Challenge, we can do it. I know we can. Even without having run a full marathon yet, I think we could train to do this. We’re looking at the 2013 marathon weekend to do this since 2012 may be tough on us with it only being a couple of months after our honeymoon. Either way, If we run this race again, I think we’re definitely going to cut down on the amount of time in Disney before the race so that we’re not already worn down a bit.

I’m still really excited about this race and like I said before, I’m kind of missing it. I want it again. I’ve got another half marathon coming up in April and I’m hoping to run even faster, but I’m taking some time to let my ankle heal first. If my ankle heals up, I think I’ll be in good shape to beat this time. My feet won’t be sore before the race even starts and I’ll probably have more sleep.

One other thing that I wanted to add is about a husband and wife that had run the race together previously, but could not this year. The husband is a part of the US military and is currently deployed in Iraq. Because they couldn’t run together and really wanted to, he set up a half marathon at his base in Iraq and got 500 other soldiers and military members to run with him. He synced up the start of the race so him and his wife would be running at the same time and they used the virtual partner feature of their Garmins to virtually run together. Before the race, they got to wish each other good luck via a live satellite feed. This was one of the most amazing things.

Below are are bunch of photos, some of us, some of the full marathon runners, and some of the medal we received. They were taken with a variety of cameras (my DSLR, a point and shoot, and an iPhone).

The decision has been made, I’m going to run the half marathon in Disney World this upcoming January. It conveniently falls right in the middle of a trip I was already planning on taking there so I feel like I have to do it. I actually can’t believe how much I want to do another one. The first one was one of the most physically intense things I’ve ever done, during the last three miles of the race, I hated myself for doing that to myself. Despite that, it didn’t take long to forget about those feelings and want to do it again.

There are a few half marathons that all fall on the same day this October, but unfortunately, my fiancée and I will be away that weekend so we won’t be able to make any of them. Since we both love Disney World and got engaged there, we felt like it was almost fate that it fell on a day in which we were already planning on being there. I mean, I don’t really believe in fate, but you know.

This time around, I plan to train more intensely with more longer runs and a faster pace. I was insanely happy with my time in the last race, but I want to do better this time. I think with the right training, I can take a few minutes off without a problem. My biggest concern about the race is that it’s right in the middle of a vacation. It took me a couple days to recover after the last one to the point where I could actually walk without much soreness. I don’t want that to happen again, I don’t want to lose a couple days of Disney because of the race. If we have to take the rest of race day easy, that’s okay, we’re going to be there for a full week, but the next day, I want to get back to having fun. Going to Disney World is a very walking intensive trip and since we’re going with a group, I don’t want to slow anyone down. The other thing is that for a couple days before the race, I want to be careful how I eat so that I don’t have anything in me that’s not going to feel great around mile nine or ten.

I’m hoping that some solid training starting now will help a lot with those issues. I want to get my body to the point where 13 miles isn’t such a shock. I think if 10+ mile runs are more the norm for me by then, I should be able to get through the race with a great time and without being sore for a few days afterwards.

We shall see!