The goal of my 4th Goofy Challenge and 5th
Walt Disney World Marathon was to finish.
My goal of any marathon is always to finish in the upright position
without injury. However, I had in my
head & heart that I wanted to finish this marathon with a time less than 5
hours (because I had done it twice before – Goofy 2011, 2012). Unfortunately, the weather called for race
temps to be in the 80’s and being from the Northeast, I was not accustomed to running
in such hot weather in January. The last
four Walt Disney World Marathon Weekends we had seen all types of weather from
temps in the 70’s (2009) to 30’s with sleet and snow (miserable 2010) and then
perfect running weather in 2011 & 2012.
We were beginning the Marathon journey with my running gals,
Alison & Janice, and their daughters Becca and Dani - both running their
very first marathons. Janice was running
her first Goofy and Alison and I were the Disney veterans. You can tell from our faces that we knew it
was going to be a tough day.


I had run 4 previous WDW Marathons and I had never stopped
for photos with the characters. I had
never really experienced a Disney race the way it is supposed to be experienced! What a shame.
As soon as I began standing in the lines for the characters is when I
really began to have fun! This was one
of my personal worst finishes for a marathon (only 1 other was worst and at that one it was
90’s degrees and we were running up mountains), but it was the most enjoyable Marathon experiences
that I’ve ever had!
Once I realized that I was not going to finish under 5-hrs I
loosened up and lived in the moment! I
stood in lines of 10+ runners at the character stops - ALL THE CHARACTER STOPS!
I rode a roller-coaster during a marathon!!! Expedition Everest was set to open in 5
minutes when I ran through Animal Kingdom.
Why not wait and ride it?!! What’s
another 5 minutes to your time when you can enjoy one of the best rides on
property!

So what I learned from 2013’s WDW Marathon and
Goofy’s Challenge is that maybe you really shouldn't think about earning a PR
during a runDisney race. Maybe you should just focus on the runDisney fun and save "racing" for a non-Disney event.
I will have to
keep that in mind when I run the Princess Half Marathon February 24th!
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