Dopey Challenge: Full Marathon

2:45am and our phone alarms started going off. 2 freaking 45am! I wasn’t super exhausted because we had gone to bed around 7pm the night before and I actually slept pretty well, but I certainly wasn’t in the mood to be awake at the time of the day. It was marathon day. The culmination of it all! The hard work started now. And by hard work, I mean keeping my eyes open!

Enter in a repeat of the other mornings. Get dressed. Taxi to Epcot. Long ass walk to starting corral. Long ass wait to start. By this point though we had gotten smart and just found a spot on the ground and sat out the wait until it was our turn to start.

Before we knew it, the fireworks were going off and I was pressing the ‘run’ button on my Garmin and we were off! The first part of the course was a repeat from the previous day. Victoria’s foot was feeling better after she had popped the blister the night before, but it wasn’t long before her knee started to give her even more trouble. She did good keeping up with me for the first couple of miles, but I could tell just shy of mile 5 that I was starting to pull away from her. We sort of have this unspoken rule where it is kind of okay to do that. I think we both know that there comes a point where we both have our own paces to go at and we just go. I felt bad leaving her behind and I know she felt bad slowing me down and so we separated. I knew at that point the rest of the marathon was going to be hard for both of us. What I didn't realize was just how hard. 

I didn’t have my ipod along for music (I did bring my headphones) and because I was no longer with Victoria, I was afraid of using too much phone juice listening to music and have my phone die before the end because I knew I would need it to get ahold of where Victoria was at the end so we could meet up. Thankfully my new iphone battery is super and lasts WAY longer than my Galaxy ever did. By mile 5, I had texted Jay and told him that he needed to text me every so often with encouraging words so that I would keep going. And he did great with that and it helped way more than I think he knows.

I did a little bit of interval running after mile 6, but only for about 2-3 miles. I made it to mile 13.1 before I started to have really negative thoughts about finishing. My pace was about the same the day before, but I knew I had another 13.1 miles to go. I texted Victoria at that point to see where she was and how she was doing and I heard back from her around mile 15. She was about a mile behind me, almost at mile 14 at a medic tent. She was having serious pain with every step and unfortunately the medics highly recommended that she not continue with the race. She was still making good time, but was in too much pain. As bummed as I am for her for not being able to finish, I’m glad that she followed their recommendation. I would have hated for something more serious to have happened and for her to be out of the running game for even longer. I need my running partner to heal fast!

By mile 16 I had almost had enough. I had another 10.2 miles to go and didn't think I could do it. At this point I knew Victoria was done and thought, it’d be so easy to stop at one of the many medic tents myself and just call it quits. Every part of me ached and I didn't want to take another step forward. Thankfully I was always surrounded by people. I tried to listen to one of my radio apps on my phone and it worked for about 10 minutes, but then it would get locked in the ‘buffering’ step and wouldn't work. So much for any music.

I had come and gone through Magic Kingdom at this point, as well as Animal Kingdom and around mile 17 we were headed into the ESPN Wide World of Sports Center and we passed those coming out of it around mile 21. I was totally bummed that they were so far ahead of us going in, but I kept trucking forward. I had water or powerade at every stop they had. I fueled with my Sport Beans, bananas, and even chocolate that they handed out, but I was starting to get hungry. After all, it was probably close to 10am and I hadn't eaten anything except half a bagel with peanut butter since 3am.

My pace continued to slow and by mile 20 I was consistently slower than the 16 min/mile pace that was required (but not by much). Prior to starting the race, I thought that individually you had to have a pace less than that for all of the races to qualify for your Dopey medals, but as it turns out, you just had to be faster than the two ‘balloon ladies’ in the last corral. We had started in the second to last corral so I knew I had a few minutes on them. At mile 20, my only thoughts were, just keep going, just finish, don’t get ‘swept’ off the course because you are too slow. Even if you don’t stay faster than 16 min/mile and don’t get your Dopey medals, at least you’ll have finished.

There was a lot of chatter going on around me regarding pace and finishing and medals and being swept and finally someone had heard that the race people did their last ‘hard sweep’ at mile 24 and that if you made it past that and were still ahead of the balloon ladies, you’d be able to finish and would get all your medals. All I needed to do was make it to mile 24. Easier said than done. I was dying. I wanted to quit SO bad. But, I had come so far. I couldn’t give up.

I made it to mile 24, no balloon ladies in front of me. Didn’t get swept. Now all I had to do was finish. Hot damn, I still had 2.2 miles to go and it didn't help that by this point my Garmin was off and was reading that I was about a quarter mile farther than I really was. Between mile 24 and 25 the balloon ladies did end up passing me. I didn’t care anymore. I didn’t even try to keep up with their pace. All sights were set on just getting to that finish line.

And there it was. The end/finish line was the same for all of the races so I knew when we were getting really close. All of a sudden it was just around the corner. The thing I had been wishing for for the last 13.1 miles. I rounded the corner and saw it. Each step forward brought me closer and closer. I just kept moving. Of course I had to run the last bit across and I did. I crossed the finish line and it hit me. I just finished a freaking full marathon. I didn’t burst out into tears or anything obscene, haha, but I did get very emotional. I got my medal for the marathon and slowly made my way towards the tent for the Goofy and Dopey medals. I got verified, got those medals. Took some more pictures and then found Victoria and quickly found a place to sit down. I plopped right down in the middle of a bunch of other people plopping right down. Right on the parking lot asphalt. 

Then it really hit me and I got even more emotional and then I almost did start to cry. I came, I saw, I conquered.

Best part of all, by the time I finished the marathon the sun was out and it was warm! Like sandal and shorts and tank top warm! Throughout the previous 7 hours I had gone from cold and shivering to warm, to cold and wet (thank you rain) to warm and wet, to just plain warm sunshine!

I slowly managed to get my shoes off and what awaited me was some full on ugly runner feet, haha! Can we say blisters galore!

Victoria and I managed a few more photo ops before very slowly making our way back to the taxi lot and back to the hotel where the rest of the day was promptly spent with this amazing thing called biofreeze and my wonderful compression socks and my bed.

Will I ever do another marathon? I don't know... but for now...

I came. I saw. I conquered. I finished the Dopey Challenge. 

4 races. 4 days. 4 parks. 48.6 FREAKING MILES!

CIAO! LOVE ME!