Dopey Challenge January 2018 Day 5

Saturday January 6th:
2:15am wake up. Got dressed and ready, had our normal pre-run food in our room. Bundled up again, but it wasn’t quite as cold and the previous mornings. I had on my capris, Ryan’s long socks, tank top and long sleeve tech top, two pairs of gloves and ear warmers. We got on the bus just after 3:30am and met Teri at the start area. We met up with Scott and Kathy. Then found Sue, Nancy and Sam!!! It was nice to meet them all in person! We talked a bit. I was thankful to Sam ( @croaker ) because he picked up an extra coffee and I was dragging! I took a few good long sips and that hit the spot! We got several pics together before we all needed to head off to our corrals and Scott and Kathy made their way to the monorail to cheer us on at Main Street! Teri and Ryan were going to run together and were in Corral D and I was going to run by myself in Corral E. My corral placement was going to be a bit fast for me, so I intentionally stayed to the back of my corral. Since we were already tired from the 3rd day of super early wake ups and our bodies were tired and cold, we all said we would run a good 30 minutes slower than our normal pace. It was funny because since this was our 3rd day of racing, I had zero pre-race jitters today! It was my 9th half marathon and I didn’t even have a hint of nerves!! I was a bit concerned because I was having an allergy flare up. While I was trying to sleep the night before, my throat was getting sore and my sinuses were hurting. But I tried to block that out. Thankfully, while I was running, my allergies actually calmed down!! The race started at 5:30am and I believe I crossed the start line around 6am. Our course took us from the EPCOT parking lot, down the road to Magic Kingdom, through the park, back road by the Grand Floridian, then back up the highway to EPCOT and around the Fountain of Nations, then to our same finishing exit shoot. Scott and Kathy texted me to let me know where they were on Main Street. I found them easily and got the biggest bear hug from @nascfan and Kathy! We snapped a quick selfie and I was on my way!! It was so cool to run through from the backside of the castle and come through it to see Main Street! Then off towards Thunder Mountain and Splash Mountain before exiting the park. There were tons of people cheering us on the the road by the Grand Floridian! Several characters out on the course! They had the Genie dressed in his vacation attire with a golf cart with Mickey’s face on it! I did a few selfies along the course, but didn’t stop for any of the actual photo pass pictures. I didn’t want to stop and stand in a line. I finished with my slowest half marathon time ever of 3 hours and 15 minutes, but again, that was very intentional to save my legs for the full marathon tomorrow! I received my half marathon finishers medal and went and met everyone at the family reunion area! Ryan bought me a coffee at the Joffrey’s truck and had it waiting for me! We chit chatted for a while and left around 9:40am.

We went to our room, got showered and ready for the day. We got to Magic Kingdom just before noon. We had fast passes for Splash Mountain with Scott and Kathy. But we were starving and knew we would cut it too close to make it in time to use them. So we told them to ride it and we would meet them for lunch after! Teri, her husband Ryan, my niece Kailey met us at Pecos Bills. They had ordered and saved seats for all of us upstairs. We had nachos and tacos and both were delicious!! If I remember correctly, this is when Scott showed me his Celebrating Button that said he was celebrating me! After our bellies were full, our whole gang had FP’s for Mine Train! So we went there next. We checked to see if there was an unlisted Muppets show just before the parade started, but there wasn’t. We all had FP’s for Jungle and had the best skipper ever!!! Teri was pooped, so she and her Ryan left back to their room. We kept Kailey with us! We waited at Jungle Cruise for Nancy and Sue and got a few pics with them before they boarded the Jungle Cruise. I got a text from our Ft. Meyers friends (Corey and Amy and kiddos) that they were over at EPCOT. So Scott, Kathy, Ryan, Kailey and I took the monorail. We did the resort loop because the direct line was super backed up. The first one was full so we waited for the next one since we could see it coming into the station. There was a computer issue and they had to shut down and restart. So we waited for a bit. Then they had to reset again! But this time we were good to go. We got off at the TTC and then caught the EPCOT monorail.

I was just about to text Amy when we ran into them! They had SSE FP’s but since standby was just 20 minutes, we all hopped in line together and caught up! Kailey has met them on several occasions and they all get along so well! We all enjoyed our ride, but Amy and I pretty much talked through the whole thing! Not something I would normally ever do, but we really wanted to catch up a bit! Scott and Kathy were POOPED from the early wake up! So they opted to head back to POP Century and probably had ice cream for dinner. The rest of us went to Sunshine Seasons for dinner! I had chicken, rice and beans for good pre-marathon fuel! It was yummy as always! It was nice to visit with them for a bit longer before we needed to head back to Riverside to get some sleep! We caught the bus right away back Home. Kailey came with us to our room and we waited for Teri’s husband Ryan to come get her, that didn’t take long. He dropped off Teri’s bags for tomorrow. Since they have to check out of their room by 11am, she won’t have time to run to full and get showered before then. So she will use our room. We got our morning run gear set out and ready. Lights out just after 8pm.
Miles logged 22.4 including the 13.1 miles from the half marathon.