Well another WDW Marathon Weekend has come and gone and what a weekend it was! I fell in love with this race weekend all over again and after the marathon I was on cloud nine. I have really found my personal favorite mixture of Disney fun and “real racing” that has me crossing the finish line with a smile on my face.
Let me set up the weekend for you before we jump into it.
I was in WDW January 6-13 and stayed at Art of Animation with my Dad. This is a great resort and I really find it to be a great value. It’s the quintessential Disney resort in that, if you told someone you were going to WDW and staying at a Disney resort, this is what they would picture in their head. I LOVED it! We stayed in the Lion King section and I just loved all the little touches.
I was attempting my 2nd Dopey Challenge, the previous year I had run in the inaugural challenge and came away happy, but exhausted and sick and had sworn I would never do it again. It was just too much. Then an Australian friend from my College Program days who I had run races with saw my pictures and said she wanted to come and run the challenge. The idea of having people to run with made me happy, so there I was signing up again to do 48.6 miles and I’m so glad I did.
This time around I came away much happier with my performance and I’m actually excited to do it again next year should it all work out.
Going into the weekend I my nerves were starting to get the best of me. My final long run/Dopey dress rehearsal had gone great, however, on January 1st I had driven through the night to Boulder, CO to start a new life there and so felt very removed from my final training runs and generally tired from moving. As I was unpacking my boxes, I was already dreading having to repack for race weekend.
However, as always happens, I got there and was totally ready to tackle the weekend. My plan was to walk the 5k with my dad, jog/run the 10k and half with my Australian friends and then depending on how I felt on marathon day, maybe race it, but knowing that Dopey can be draining, I didn’t want to put too much pressure on myself.
So with that let’s get to the expo!
Expo
runDisney has got this weekend down pat. It’s grown a lot since my first marathon back in 2011 and there have been some road bumps but this year ran like butter, in my opinion. I know there are disasters for some people at every race weekend, but for me, it went so well. They are still trying to figure out the best way to prove that a person fully ran a challenge but I applaud their efforts to try new things.
Buses were running frequently, the expo floor felt more open and less crowded and bib pick up was fast and efficient.
I had flow in late Tuesday night, so my dad and I decided to take an easy morning and go to the expo Wednesday afternoon. We were in no real rush and there was no merchandise that we were “do or die” about. We arrived sometime between 12:30 and 1 and went and got our bibs quickly. I printed my waiver and picked up my bib and maybe took 15-20 min total, that place is big and there is a lot of walking. I then had to go downstairs to get my t-shirts which was new this year. Usually they put all t-shirt pick-up in the main expo but Goofy and Dopey challenge participants (maybe other too?) picked up their goodie bags and any pin pre-orders in the same building as the bib pick-up. Again, super quick and easy.
We went over to the main expo, got my dad his 2 shirts and then quickly grabbed an “I Did It” Dopey shirt and a runDisney wine glass (which I love). Neither of us were really looking for anything else that day so we did a quick lap and then left. In totally we were at the expo for maybe an hour.
I did end up going back the next day to grab a couple things to complete some running outfits/extra layers but it was not too crowded and everyone was extremely efficient.
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