Goofy Challenge Vacation Day 4 - Full Marathon

A few added notes for the Half Marathon.


Among the Burma shave style signs was one that read, "John Madden is an accomplished ballroom dancer". Interesting to know but the funny thing was the woman who said "Who is John Madden" which made many runners (me included) around her laugh as her running partner tried to explain.


As we headed into the last mile and woman next to me said, "One more mile to go we can do that in our sleep!" To which I replied, "We did that the first mile, didn't we?" She liked it. :)


Now, on to today's full marathon. Realizing that there would be more people running the marathon we decided to set our alarms for 2:30 A.M. this morning. Actually we set three alarms right after getting home from the Half; in case we all crashed asleep in our places in the family room; hopefully one of the alarms would wake us up. We did all make it to beds though.


The forecast was for 30 something at 2 A.M. DROPPING to 27 by 6 A.M. (the first wave took off at 5:35 a.m.) and then warming up from then to about 47 for the day. We woke up to frozen water pipes. It was going to be THAT kind of day :) We were in the car by a little after 3 and on our way. We arrived at the Epcot parking lot just before 4 and stayed in the car until 4:30 when we made our way to the SM-Z tent to meet up with my running group friends. 6 of us were there to run both the Half (the Donald race) and Full (the mickey race) marathons and earn our Goofy Medals.


You can see in the pictures (link at the bottom of the post) that we were very bundled up. A word about bundling. Those of you who know my sister Kate know that she is always warm. When the rest of of us are in sweaters she's still wearing shorts. Today she wore 4 layers of clothing to keep warm. THAT's how cold it was.


The race starts with fireworks as you saw in yesterday's pics. I wish I had a pic of today's. I was in start corral G between two firworks displays. We were under a rainbow of color when they went off. I entered my corral and saw a woman wearing a Philadelphia Flyers sweatshirt. I went over and asked if she was from that area.

She said, "Yes, I'm from Boothwyn"
I said, "I'm from Media" and I'm about to continue but she says,
"Oh my, did you see the man yesterday in the Phillies Jacket!"
I said, "Yes. I had someone take our picture together"
"That's my husband!"
Now what are the chances? 25,000 + participants today and I end up next to the wife of someone I saw the day before. She told me that when she signed up to run the Disney Marathon (her first) her husband signed up to volunteer for the half while she watched the kids yesterday and he was watching them today while she ran. Amazing! I had someone take my picture with her on my camera and her camera so she could show her husband.


The race started and we were in the second wave. I could tell right away that this was going to be a slow race. I had spent a considerable amount of time after the half stretching and walking around to try to keep my legs loose for today. Still, my thighs burned. I did a fairly decent job of ignoring it for the first 10 miles or so but this resulted in a much slower pace than yesterday or than my previous marathon (November 2008). I finished...that's what it's all about.


Disney does a great job with this race. Plenty of hydration and fuel stops (something almost every 2 miles at least). Wherever there was a spot with little or no spectator access there were usually Disney staff or music or other distractions. Very helpful. More "Burma Shave" style signs helped on some of the more isolated spots. ALthough many of them were repeats it was still a nice distraction.


We travelled on some of the same routes but not always in the same direction and of course with twice the distance to cover we also went over new paths. The course covers all 4 Disney parks; starting and ending at Epcot. The field is so large that the start is split into two routes. For the first three miles two groups run on different routes merging between mile 3 and 4. That made for some fun conversation as we met up. "Where did you guys run?"


My plan - given that my legs had run a half marathon the day before - was to walk up the exit ramps between parks and to walk the water stops. I knew I would need walk breaks and this seemed like a good way to space them out. Between each park is an on/off ramp and I could walk up one side and then run downhill on the other side to regain my momentum. The only place this didn't work was just beforet the castle where the road goes on a steep downhill first. This same down/up occurred in the Half, yesterday, but at an earlier time in the race.

Well plans are not always what happens. By mile 10 I was really feeling the effects of two days of long distance running in a row. So while I kept to the plan I added many more walk breaks. At mile 14 I was ravenous. Fortunately they had bananas there and I took a nice long walk break to eat one! I struggled a lot between 17 and 20. By mile 20 my brain realized that I was determined to do this despite its misgivings and it stopped fighting me. I was able to walk less after that.

So as noted earlier it was cold. The next time I run a marathon I really hope it is a warm(er) one. Having said that I don't see how it could be much colder. (Famous last words I know). My first marathon was at 26 degrees and you'd think (or I'd think) that in Florida it would be a bit warmer. Again we had ice on the ground at the water stops. At the first water stop the volunteers filled the cups just a little too soon and there was slushy Powerade and frozen water. Of course this just made the whole experience more fun and something to talk about during and after the run. At the sponge stop the volunteers brought a kiddie pool to put the water in hoping the sun would warm it up some. Very few runners took a sponge.

Two of my favorite spectator homemade signs -
#1 "How long did it take the penguin to run a marathon? It didn't because even penguins don't run marathons"
#2 "If it were easy, we'd be doing it"

Someone called out as we approached Mile 25. "This is easier than doing sit-ups". I wasn't so sure.

All in all it was a great experience. Despite the pain (which is temporary) the feeling of great accomplishment is awesome.

My pictures
http://picasaweb.google.com/PaulaDaveTansey/GoofyChallengeFullMarathon#

Pictures from the spectator's point of view. (Thanks Katie)
http://picasaweb.google.com/ktjl92/2010MarathonMickeyGoofyPortion#