Marathon Weekend 2016

[Barca33Runner]

Finally booked for POR for marathon weekend for the fifth year in a row. Dragging of feet led to booking "Royal" rooms which seems like it is going to lead to some extra walking during our down time. Oh well, still exciting to start nailing down some plans for my favorite "vacation" of the year.

 

[SarahDisney]

Totally forgot to post this after my run this morning.

I have a question for my fellow run/walkers. Do you use the same intervals for all runs, regardless of distance? Or do you vary your intervals for different distances.
For me - I've been doing 3/1 for long runs and 5/1 for shorter runs, and the 5/1 is a little hard sometimes. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the 3/1 for all runs or try 4.5/1 or 4/1 for my short runs.
I'd love to hear what everyone else does!

 

[AThrillingChase]

I just wanted to add, there are many casual runners out there that run these races too. Generally, the people you will find here are going to be pretty dedicated if they take the time to join the board and discussion regularly. Many who have been running for much longer than I! But you can look at the corral break downs too and see the wide span of running times. That has helped me when I felt intimidated by times much quicker than my own. Disney races attract all types of runners because of the great entertainment value, a lot of advanced runners and first timers alike!

 

[kevdad]

Just starting the race is an amazing thing that most people won't even attempt.

Getting my butt out of bed at 3 a.m. at WDW to go run a marathon is going to be a HUGE accomplishment!

 

[Barca33Runner]

I finished my first marathon in a little over seven hours in 2013 (I think they were a little understanding of slower times because of the heat) and never felt the slightest bit of negativity from anyone. Spectators, cast members, volunteers, other runners, you name it and they were all supportive every step of the way. Disney is a great place for runners of all abilities for precisely this reason. I certainly don't think any negativity/intimidation was intended by anyone in this thread and think it is pretty cool that there are so many people with so many different, but ultimately similar, goals for these races.

 

[DOOM1001]

Getting my butt out of bed at 3 a.m. at WDW to go run a marathon is going to be a HUGE accomplishment!

For me the whole getting up at 2-2:30am thing, which is the time I sometimes go to bed is half the battle,I am not normally an early to bed,early to ride person!!I basically have to change my whole sleep pattern in the days before the race to even have a chance to get some sleep before the marathon,last year it was even more important since I did Goofy.What I normally do is basically get up as late as possible on Thursday,leave my house in South Florida around 10pm at night to arrive at 2am Friday morning at Disney,I'll hit the waffle house for some ham and cheese omelettes and waffles and head over to be a spectator for the 10K.Afterwards I'll go to the expo,check in to the hotel and get some lunch and then go to sleep,I'm basically skipping sleep on Thursday night but at least I am sleeping in very late on Thursday and will be going to sleep around dinner time on Friday night.I know my sleep pattern and if I don't handle it this way I know I'll end up running the marathon on little to no sleep.The whole no sleeping on Thursday night is far from ideal but it's just what I feel I need to do to have a successful and enjoyable race,plus in a way I kind of enjoy doing it this way as I enjoy arriving at a Disney hotel at the time all the runners are boarding the bus for the 10K,it definitely gets me in the whole marathon weekend mood.

 

[Neoflynn]

I think it's all relative. Unless you are at the very far ends of the spectrum you can always find people faster than you, and people that are slower than you. My first race I stood beside gentlemen in their mid 40s who were talking about being slow. They looked like they new what they were doing so I figured I'd just hang with them. What I didn't realize until I was about a mile in was that their "slow" was a 7mm pace. I about died keeping up with them for the first mile and a half.

For the 99% of us that aren't elites the only person we are competing with on race day is ourselves. We are all struggling out there fighting our roadblocks both mentally and physically. When I get on a treadmill, like a did today, I have to fight the little voice in my head that screams " you should really just push that stop button and go sit down". I'm happy that my body lets me run this way, but it doesn't come easy.

I think in general running is a struggle. We are all fighting against the same forces. I think that's one of the reasons why runners can genuinely appreciate everyone else out there on the course. We all know that it's not easy and so it's easy to celebrate everyone else's victories, and feel empathy for those that are struggling.

This is true and I think its something that we all struggle with at times, I have some very fast friends and it can be discourage sometimes but we all have to remember that our biggest competition is with ourselves and not get caught up in the pace so much

Sorry, I don't mean to sound elitist throwing out all of these lower goal times. As was well said by IamTrike, we are just racing against ourselves so no matter what time you achieve we should all be proud - there are very few people in the world that could even complete a half, so that's my ultimate goal - even if I have to crawl.

I don't think anyone here was offended we are all at different levels and you shouldn't feel ashamed of what you have been able to accomplish so far. I know I have been struggling a lot with being to hard on myself lately. I got it in my head after I did really well my first two races this year (lowering my half PR by almost 10mins the first one and then knocked another 3 mins off the second one) that maybe I could crack a 2 hour half marathon this year and ever since then I have struggled a bit. I am actually running a half this Saturday and it had originally been my sub 2 goal race (just in time for PoT for the marathon) but I have kind of softend on that a bit as I realize since my training is now focused on the Marathon I probably am not in tune to run a sub 2 this weekend so I am going to just do my best and see what happens

 

[pamster]

@SarahDisney - I'm a newbie runner (started about a year ago), so please take my thoughts with a grain of salt. I vary my runs. Some days I challenge myself to run the entire distance without stopping, but other days I run/walk at different intervals. I generally go by how energetic or tired I am (dependent on amount of sleep, if the weather is perfect or crazy hot).

 

[Kathymford]

Totally forgot to post this after my run this morning.

I have a question for my fellow run/walkers. Do you use the same intervals for all runs, regardless of distance? Or do you vary your intervals for different distances.
For me - I've been doing 3/1 for long runs and 5/1 for shorter runs, and the 5/1 is a little hard sometimes. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the 3/1 for all runs or try 4.5/1 or 4/1 for my short runs.
I'd love to hear what everyone else does!

I am a 1/1 interval runner. I do it no matter the distance. This is the first time I've tried extending my distances in my current training (first half coming up) and just keeping that interval is difficult for me and I feel very accomplished when I actually can do 1/1 for 8 miles. Going for 9 this weekend!

I never thought I would have the cardio to do longer intervals, I have some hereditary (non-life threatening) stamina things that I thought would bar me from it. But it turns out, training actually helps. WHO. KNEW. After my first half marathon I'm going to work on getting faster and I think the key to that will be strengthening my legs and extending those intervals.

I DO push myself to go faster in the shorter runs within those distances and for the long runs just try to have the stamina to finish.

 

[Optimator]

We are all planning on memorizing state facts so for each mile of goofy we'll discuss a different state. $ dudes rambling on about Idaho should be enough motivation to get people to run faster than us.

Most of my fastest races were direct results of being surrounded by "motivating" people.

Running away from a dude in D.C. with a plastic bottle full of beads got me a PR! A guy blowing snot rockets every 5 steps chased me for 5 miles in Philly. Some bozo singing Hotel California off key kept me from moving the last couple miles at Marine Corps one year.

I might actually hang around a while to hear some little know facts about New Mexico!

 

[RunDisneyDad]

@Neoflynn .... Good luck on your Half Saturday!

 

[IamTrike]

Totally forgot to post this after my run this morning.

I have a question for my fellow run/walkers. Do you use the same intervals for all runs, regardless of distance? Or do you vary your intervals for different distances.
For me - I've been doing 3/1 for long runs and 5/1 for shorter runs, and the 5/1 is a little hard sometimes. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the 3/1 for all runs or try 4.5/1 or 4/1 for my short runs.
I'd love to hear what everyone else does!

I don't have any science to back this up, but early on I read that if you always do the same interval you can trick yourself into thinking that you need that interval even after developing the cardio and leg strength to run without them. To try and stave off these mental dependancies I varied my intervals when I was doing them.

 

[Castle2Castle]

Totally forgot to post this after my run this morning.

I have a question for my fellow run/walkers. Do you use the same intervals for all runs, regardless of distance? Or do you vary your intervals for different distances.
For me - I've been doing 3/1 for long runs and 5/1 for shorter runs, and the 5/1 is a little hard sometimes. I'm trying to decide whether to go to the 3/1 for all runs or try 4.5/1 or 4/1 for my short runs.
I'd love to hear what everyone else does!

I vary, and I've started pushing my wife to vary as well in her training.

I do the FIRST training which calls for training runs 3x per week with various intervals and distances on the weekday runs. Doing that helped build up my endurance, which led me to extend long runs from 5:1 intervals to longer minutes to eventually doing a mile or more with one minute walks to sip a drink and/or do an energy gel. As I've gotten better at that and handled 5-10 mile runs with no breaks during the week, I'm looking to extend my step-back long runs of 15 miles to 5 miles:1 and gradually increase intervals for the 20 mile long runs from 1.3 now to that same 5 by mid-October.

My wife has typically been a 1:1 runner with no interest in changing that, but also wanting to get faster. After convincing her that gradually extending those runs would help her get faster and be easier than increasing the pace of those one minute runs, she set a spring PR doing just under two minute runs. She dropped off the training for a bit, so now we're building her long runs back up from 1:30 while adapting the FIRST training for her two weekday runs. On Tuesdays we're playing with light speed work, running 0.25-0.5 mile intervals faster than race pace, which still takes well over a minute to do; and on Thursdays we're running half mile intervals with only one minute rest in between, gradually increasing the number of half miles run before we start to increase toward full miles.

The weekday runs only total 3-4 miles, so she's working harder but for less time. This makes the increased intervals on her long runs easier since they're still no longer than her weekday runs and at a lower intensity. She's improving both her pace when running and her overall pace by spending a longer amount of time at that pace than before.

 

[IamTrike]

Most of my fastest races were direct results of being surrounded by "motivating" people.

Running away from a dude in D.C. with a plastic bottle full of beads got me a PR! A guy blowing snot rockets every 5 steps chased me for 5 miles in Philly. Some bozo singing Hotel California off key kept me from moving the last couple miles at Marine Corps one year.

I might actually hang around a while to hear some little know facts about New Mexico!

I've had buddies that ran races near the dribbling basketball people. That sounds seems like it would get annoying after a while.

 

[DOOM1001]

I've had buddies that ran races near the dribbling basketball people. That sounds seems like it would get annoying after a while.

That's Darren,aka Doctor Dribble,he lives near me in South Florida and occasionally goes to my run club,he's a really good guy and does a lot for kids.It's weird when he goes to the run club and just runs,no basketball,no dribbling!!

 

[Baloo in MI]

I think it's all relative. Unless you are at the very far ends of the spectrum you can always find people faster than you, and people that are slower than you. My first race I stood beside gentlemen in their mid 40s who were talking about being slow. They looked like they new what they were doing so I figured I'd just hang with them. What I didn't realize until I was about a mile in was that their "slow" was a 7mm pace. I about died keeping up with them for the first mile and a half.

For the 99% of us that aren't elites the only person we are competing with on race day is ourselves. We are all struggling out there fighting our roadblocks both mentally and physically. When I get on a treadmill, like a did today, I have to fight the little voice in my head that screams " you should really just push that stop button and go sit down". I'm happy that my body lets me run this way, but it doesn't come easy.

I think in general running is a struggle. We are all fighting against the same forces. I think that's one of the reasons why runners can genuinely appreciate everyone else out there on the course. We all know that it's not easy and so it's easy to celebrate everyone else's victories, and feel empathy for those that are struggling.

Just an awesome point of view! This is what I love about running, it is about challenging yourself. It is about setting a goal, achieving it or not and then trying again. There will always be people that are faster and people that are slower, but what really matters is how great it feels when you leave it all out on a trail. Your tired, maybe a little sore but way stoked! Running is hard, that is why it is so great!

 

[Baloo in MI]

This is true and I think its something that we all struggle with at times, I have some very fast friends and it can be discourage sometimes but we all have to remember that our biggest competition is with ourselves and not get caught up in the pace so much



I don't think anyone here was offended we are all at different levels and you shouldn't feel ashamed of what you have been able to accomplish so far. I know I have been struggling a lot with being to hard on myself lately. I got it in my head after I did really well my first two races this year (lowering my half PR by almost 10mins the first one and then knocked another 3 mins off the second one) that maybe I could crack a 2 hour half marathon this year and ever since then I have struggled a bit. I am actually running a half this Saturday and it had originally been my sub 2 goal race (just in time for PoT for the marathon) but I have kind of softend on that a bit as I realize since my training is now focused on the Marathon I probably am not in tune to run a sub 2 this weekend so I am going to just do my best and see what happens

Hey, good luck this weekend! Hope that PR is there for the taking, have a great race.

 

[Baloo in MI]

So life right now is crazy busy and of course my training plan is beginning to build. I really want evening time for my family on the few days I can leave work at a reasonable time. This is leaving me with the dreaded early morning runs. Alarm goes off and it is still night time dark, my bed is warm and comfortable... I have missed a few runs. How do you early runners make it happen? Any good tips?

 

[pigletliz]

So life right now is crazy busy and of course my training plan is beginning to build. I really want evening time for my family on the few days I can leave work at a reasonable time. This is leaving me with the dreaded early morning runs. Alarm goes off and it is still night time dark, my bed is warm and comfortable... I have missed a few runs. How do you early runners make it happen? Any good tips?

I set up my running gear next to the bed and the alarm. I try to get dressed super fast so that I don't have time to think about it. Some times I will schedule the early morning run with friends so that we can suffer together.

 

[Neoflynn]

Hey, good luck this weekend! Hope that PR is there for the taking, have a great race.

Thanks I'm hoping I get it but at the same time I'm trying to not set myself up to be discouraged if I don't get it, trying to keep it all in perspective as my training has switched focus to the marathon. and as much as I want that sub 2 it may not make that much of a difference as far as corral placement so even if I don't get it this race I may get it before the year is over which was my original goal

I set up my running gear next to the bed and the alarm. I try to get dressed super fast so that I don't have time to think about it. Some times I will schedule the early morning run with friends so that we can suffer together.

along this same line ive heard of people sleeping in their running clothes so its just get up and go and then you don't have to even think about it. on a side note if you need a little extra push try watching this video ( I wish I could set this as my alarm for my early morning runs)