WDW Marathon Weekend – The Dopey Challenge: The 5K

So, like I said, I was REALLY looking forward to getting down to Florida to hang out in the sunshine and warm air…Well.  Yeah.

Thursday morning we woke up to this 🙂 What you don’t see is that the “feels like” temp was somewhere in the 30’s. Which means that some of us were not as prepared as we should have been. 😉 Oh, I *brought* gloves with me, I just left them in the room! And with the 5K there would be very little time to actually warm up.

I added a white jacket to this which helped a bit!

We were planning to meet up with my Facebook running friends way out in the open where the wind was sweeping cross the plains (or something like that!). It was VERY windy! A few of us made it!

But then we went and hid behind a fence with a large group of warm bodies…I mean, people! Then right before we headed into the corrals we gathered up a few more or our friends for one last pre-race picture!

I had been placed in the last corral. The. LAST. Corral. for the 5K and the 10K. Which, in the end turned out to not be too bad…once you got past the wheelchairs and people strolling along. We hung out with a couple hundred of our closest friends and listened to all the other corrals head out — but let me tell you, there’s a different excitement from the VERY back of the pack that I hadn’t noticed before!

There’s the start line….

As we were taking off, the sun started coming up. This is always one of the best parts of these early morning races!!

The earlier corrals…and then there were none.

I managed to grab one picture before my phone died. At mile TWO! (aside: Oh how I hate you iPhone!) but I hadn’t really planned many photo stops anyway!

In honor of Vanessa…ps. they were empty.

As we were cruising through Future World a few of my friends caught up with me and it was nice to finish with them! There were even jumping pictures involved…though, upon further review, my feet do not appear to have left the ground!!

Since my phone died, I don’t have my splits but my overall pace was good and I was happy with the results! And I got to take home this baby!

Possibly my most favoritest runDisney 5K “medal” of all!!! This makes me so happy!

After finishing and catching up with my friend Tracy, we hopped back on the bus to warm up. Initially we had thought we might try to get over to Harry Potter World at Universal, but the need to find warmer clothes took precedence 🙂 We headed back over to the expo – where I grabbed a Bondi Band and a runDisney sweatshirt

Mine has maroon color instead of the blue…

We hung out at the ESPN grill for awhile – lunch and a beer or two – then back to the resort where…not much happened!! We took a walk around just to kind of get our bearings (and Tracy was NOT thrilled to hear that we’d be running right past here when we were at about mile 24 or so on Sunday!)

I’d never stayed at the Beach Club Resort and it was nice. And VERY conveniently located. And really, in my case, reserved for VERY special occasions so…I’ll likely be back at POP Century before you know it!!

Once it was dark, it was time for a shower and bed! I managed to crash pretty quickly, though it wasn’t a very deep sleep since I knew the alarm would be going off soon!!

10K, coming up!!!

Tags: #Dopey15, Pluto, Racing The Dream