An Extremely Goofy Trip Report

[Pongo53]

Thank you Bwinther and Dolce for posting nice comments. I truly appreciate it. I'm having fun reliving the runs and thinking about Disney, and it's nice that others are getting something out of it. I hope the report will encourage others to run it or will be an opportunity to see or re-live the race from different angles or perspectives.

Continuing with the race just our of MK, I encountered another pixie with wings. How do these girls do it with wings?

And I have no idea why, but I love this section that is just a connecting road. I think I love the way the orange cones curve and go on forever.

and ever!

ah, here's where they start curving again

Every now and then I scratch my head. It was not congested here, so why court injury and run on the grass? Not that I don't do my share of goofy things (like run the Goofy!)

I was wondering why I took this shot, then I thought it sorta shows how people solve the porta potty line problem. Just run off course and ---well --I guess if you gotta go......... but like my DD says, "Get a room!"

But then I looked closer and remembered I did not want to take a picture of people doing that, especially at WDW, so what this photo actually shows is a group running into MK just on the outside of the car racing track while we are running out of MK toward AK. With eight corrals starting in waves, and all the different paces, we really spread out a lot. BTW, DW asked me to clarify that AK=Animal Kingdom, NOT Alaska. (Sorry, Sarah.)

While I'm not positive how far into the race this is, it is heading into the area I call the forest, but love to know what others call it. It is where we turn off from the connection to World Drive and take the back road toward the back entrance of AK, so that should make it barely past the half. Of note to likely no one else but me, I finished the first half of the Full a bit faster (2:20:00) than I ran the Half yesterday (2:20:21). For a relative novice runner like me, this is NOT a good idea. I think I used up too much of my energy doing this, even though I was feeling fine.

The road through here seems to go on forever, with not much to entertain, compared to having just run through MK and then running by Mary Poppins and Golfing Mickey and friends. But the area is really pretty nonetheless. Last year, starting from corral H, by the time I got here, what is shown here as a smattering of discarded cups was a veritable avalanche of cups besotting this ordinarily pristine landscape. (Oh dear, help me out, I seem to have come down with poetry)

But Disney did try to entertain the whole way. Here an alligator to encourage you to run, and a rather snarky guy with a microphone and what many considered to be rude comments. Maybe the alligator ate him before long. One can hope.

Here, I'm pretending that the one girl is socking the microphone guy with her left hook.

And oh my goodness, the return of the fairies from mile six. Good going, ladies! Maybe I need wings?

If you look around, you see pretty things at WDW. Disney has extensive waterways on the property.

And wildlife in abundance. Hi Thumper! Hi random, un-named rabbit!

And as Tolkein says, "The road goes ever on..."

Or at least until mile 14. My time has crept a bit. The first signs of the coming meltdown? (my pace slackened 20 seconds this mile and again the next, before settling down once more.)

I think I'm at my limit of pictures I'm allowed to post in one posting, so this is of necessity, "to be continued"

 

[Dolce27]

Before we got to the castle, I ran past Repunzell before realizing who she was. Somehow we have not seen the feature yet.

Tangled is a really cute movie. I do recommend.

Pausing briefly, VERY briefly to wonder what Cinderella's stepsister and stepmother are doing with the Prince.

Probably holding him captive.

Unlike you, I was more than ready for that MK - AK stretch to end. The orange cones were annoying. I enjoyed running through AK this year, however. I hit it right before park opening and it was nice to run through there with only other runners and no guests trying to cross your path.

 

[Pongo53]

Not everyone runs a perfect race. I never have and likely never will. My pace slowed here on the back half, on a day when I thought I could keep going like the little engine that could. Looking back here at mile 14 we find a youngster in his 30's who looks fit and fine, and if I had to bet, I'd bet that he was about to eat me up and leave me for dead. We'd been close together all event, very close at the 5k and the ten mile points, and he and I were 4 seconds apart at the half, and even though I slowed towards the end, he must have gotten into worse trouble as I'd pulled out five minutes by mile twenty, and ended up ten minutes ahead. Just an example as to what happens when you put too much effort in the first part and don't leave enough at the end. Or---since we were both doing the Goofy, we may have both just underestimated what the 13.1 the day before took out of us.

Will I listen to Perdita next year when she tells me to take it easy if I'm doing the Goofy? YES! And I will stop and take better pictures, hopefully, rather than try to keep running through them.

Here, it looks like we are nearing the end of the "forest," and have picked up a flock of birds.

Not out of the woods yet, though, but we are nearing the water treatment plant.

I think this is just past the water treatment area as we get ready to enter AK.

You'd never believe it, but this curve section is actually nice. We're getting ready to go in AK from the back, and they were giving out gels by Clif up ahead. I took two, as I was using up my gels faster than I had planned, and wanted to have something at the end if I needed it. I'd never tried Clif Gels before so I only kept them for an emergency, not wanting to tempt fate with different chemicals.

Skipping past the somewhat boring back part of AK, here we are somewhere in mile 17 actually in the guest part of the park.

You could almost believe you were the only person here. If you closed your eyes and ignored the hundreds of supporters and runners urging you on. Here I was looking for the tree of life. I missed seeing it last year, if you can believe it.

Everest, on the other hand, I can always locate.

At last, the elusive (for me) tree of life:

Shortly after this the ASi photographers were catching us with Everest in the background.

Perdita:

Perdy, by the way, was in a lot of pain here with her torn ligament after her fall at mile 11. She put on a happy face when she saw the cameras as DD's love the park and she wanted to let them know mom was having a good time there too when they would look at her picture.

And then trying to look all manly and like I'm ready to use power tools, here's me, Pongo:

Mile maker 17 and we are just about done with the interior of AK. It would take another mile or so to clear the property, what with the run through the parking lot.

And out the parking lot:

It's at this point a well-wisher was telling us encouraging things and as I ran by him he said "Looking good!" and I replied, "I beg to differ!" and he countered with, "Well, you're still smiling! and I gave him a bigger smile and said its hard to not smile at Disney. Even in this race.

Even when you lose all your stamina as I was about to do. From AK, we exit and go up a "freeway" that takes us by the moderate resorts, Sports, Movies, Music--those. And the McDonalds. I was feeling a lot worse now, and the two days running were catching up with me. After the mile 19 overpass, before we got to the 180 hairpin near espn sports, I actually had the thought, "I'm tired of doing this. Would it hurt anything if I just went over to that median strip and slept for a while?" But I pressed on.

DW always says the race does not start until mile 20. If that is the case I was almost a DNS. (Did not start).

I conserved energy here by not taking as many pictures, and I apologize for that. At mile 21, I looked at the runners approaching on the other side of the hairpin complex, and happened to see Perdita about six tenths of a mile behind me. I got all concerned and worried that she was having a problem as she had started out in C and I was D this year. She is a better runner than I am, and I was very concerned. I had a shoe problem, I thought, (turns out it was a foot problem) and so I stopped at the top of a hill to re-tie my shoes. During this time, Perdita caught up the distance and re-passed me just before mile 21.5. She was a little worse for the wear, it appeared, but she was focused and I did not want to disturb her concentration, as she likes to be within herself when she runs. (We ran Austin this year and ran it together for over 20 miles, and never said a word to each other. I did get some great action running shots of her that way, though.)

I had no idea how bad off she was, and I was stuck in my own problem of losing all the energy in my leg muscles. And actually, other than the stop for the shoes, I kept going fairly well, just nowhere near my pace in the first half. I guess I will have to wait till next Disney for the elusive 4:40.

I stopped about mile 22 and got my picture taken with green army man from Toy Story. My son is active duty Marine, so this meant a lot to me.

That's 14 pictures for this post, which I am led to believe is the limit, so I'll continue this later, possibly concluding the report portion of the post.

 

[Pongo53]

Dolce, we will see Tangled as soon as it releases on DVD. Thank you for the tip. DD3 is convinced it is going to be great as she loves the music already. DD4 needs some convincing.

What time did you hit AK? I think for the actual guest portion I was there around from around 8:50 to 9:00am, or close to that, if I'm reading my watch right. Thankfully I did not notice any guests on the trails in the park. The ones at EPCOT later, were downright dangerous.

As to the link between MK and AK, I have to agree it is my second-least-favorite stretch, I just try to put a happy face on it. You know, look for pretty sections, and try not to breathe going past the water treatment

I would really love to hear your recollections about parts of the race that either impressed you most or had an impact on you. I wish you had pictures of your run. By the way, did you notice how "thin" our goodie bag was this year? No single use camera. Even in the age of digital and the twilight of film, lots of people used those last year.

From another race, I saw a guy post pictures that he had taken with his spy sunglasses--they have a camera embedded in them. That might be the way to go for race shots. Not sure of the resolution, though.

 

[Dsnygrl1205]

Great race report! The Goofy seems like torture! I think I'll stick to running one or the other..