Magical Miles to the Marathon! Comments welcomed

[Blue Caterpillar]

Hi,

My name is Ashlee and booked a hotelfor WDW Dopey challenge 2022 thru a travel agent , it will be my first visit and Staying at pop.
I live in very rural Arizona, in exceedingly small town of about 700 people. I am the only employee of the Library so I get the fancy title of Director. My Pug of 12 years recently passed, at the same time there was some feral kittens in the abandoned house (so many houses here are empty, but recently the town has made an effort to start cleaning them up) next to mine, so I caught them. I figured as a single librarian, I needed to complete stereotype and have cats. The difference between an old lazy pug and two hyperactive kittens is HUGE. They can get everywhere and into everything! But they are fun. I also decided to watch all the marvel movies in order (Chronologically). I just finished the first Avengers and am on Iron Man 3. For some reason Disney+ doesn’t have the Incredible Hulk, I have never seen it but my sister said it was terrible so I skipped it. I may rent it from amazon, but it seems strange for it to be played by Edward Norton.
Like many people this past year has been a real struggle. I was listening to a For the Long Run podcast episode with Mikel Haggadone and he said something that really struck a chord with me, He said something along the lines if you feel like you have nothing positive right now find something you can look forward too, even if it is in the future. Hence my registration for Dopey. Like many the stress and sadness due to covid, has been suffocating to me at times. I do feel hope though- Hopefully the vaccine will help us get back to normal.
One benefit of living in the middle of nowhere is there are lots of ranch roads and even the highways are not very busy. I have kept running up this past year, in fact I have a half marathon in person on Sunday. but have put on weight due to boredom eating and too much imbibing, so I do not have time goals other than finishing. I haven’t been too serious about my training just running what I felt like and a longer run on the weekend, once I get a baseline of my fitness on Sunday I plan on setting a real plan. I have also started to clean up my diet. I do feel more motivated by having a big goal in my sights.
I am looking forward to getting to know people on the boards, learning about Walt Disney World and crossing my fingers marathon weekend can happen!

 

[disneygpa]

Welcome aboard! Good luck training and running Dopey. I gotta say, its something I'll never forget!!
Looking forward to following along on your journey!

 

[DopeyBadger]

Excited to follow along!

 

[Kerry1957]

Welcome. There is a lot of good advice on these boards and very little nonsense. Good luck with your training! I "just" run the marathon, but there is so much enthusiasm for Dopey on these boards that I am rethinking everything for 2022.

 

[shellott-hill]

Hooray! Another runner to follow along with. I look forward to your adventures.

I have re-watched all the Marvel movies in chronological order last fall and loved it. (Yes, I even suffered through the Incredible Hulk). Seeing all the mid-credit/after-credit scenes in chronological order is spectacular. Some of the other runners on this board recommended listening to Binge-Mode Marvel while out running to help pass the time. The just recently finished recording the last episode in the series. I find them a great distraction while slogging through the miles and quite infectious after watching each movie again.

Congratulations on the hotel and getting on the bib list for Dopey. I hope the races proceed and we all can get those coveted bibs!

 

[Herding_Cats]

This is a great group, as others have said. WELCOME!

Welcome. There is a lot of good advice on these boards and very little nonsense. Good luck with your training! I "just" run the marathon, but there is so much enthusiasm for Dopey on these boards that I am rethinking everything for 2022.

The Dopey enthusiasm is ridiculously hard to resist. I have yet to run an in-person race and am becoming more dopey-curious by the month.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Well this week has been a bit all over the place. In my county, I am lucky that they considered my job as essential, so I got my second shot on Wednesday. I had no reaction to the first besides a wee bit of soreness. This second one was a doozy for me! I went on a run that afternoon and it wasn't so great., coupled with the fact that the zipper broke on my hydration belt pocket were I keep my phone. Then I had body aches and hot and cold spells. I was exhausted all day Thursday and went to sleep at 7! According to my watch I got like 12 hours. This morning I woke up and realized I hadn't seen the final reminders for my race on Sunday, only to discover it has been moved to April 10th. It is too late to cancel my hotel so I'll still be going to Tucson this weekend it seems. I get so many emails I'm not the best at checking, and it came from a different email then the one I was used to. I'm a little disappointed but it will give me time to put in some proper training and hopefully shift a few pounds. . I plan on going on a short run in Tucson. Next month my goals are to do proper warmups, Ive been lazy in that regard, and add some speed-work back.

On a happy note, I did get some new Disney mugs as my little monsters broke one of my favorites, and I love Disney mugs. I got the villain memes mugs. And my cats got a box. I'm pretty sure they are litter mates, but I caught them separately about a month apart. Meet Hugo and Winchester.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

This is a great group, as others have said. WELCOME!



The Dopey enthusiasm is ridiculously hard to resist. I have yet to run an in-person race and am becoming more dopey-curious by the month.

Right? At first I was thinking of doing the marathon only, but it seems such a fun challenge, and four costumes as well. I really like in person races. I have only done one since this pandemic, it was pretty small and they started everyone either individually or with if they came together every 30 seconds so it didn't feel very race-y to me. The camaraderie of runners is so encouraging!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Well the past week or so hasn't been the best for me. I have been in a funk, and it makes it hard to go out running. I didn't end up running in Tuscon as the hotel was one of those right next to I-10 and really I was looking for an excuse not to. I did find a copy of the incredible Hulk dvd
at a thrift store, so I can watch that eventually. And I bought another Disney mug - the one that has all the Disney Cats on it. I finished WandaVision, and I am looking forward to the Falcon and the Winter Soldier.

I need to get back on track. If I miss one run it seems to quickly turn into more. But its a new week, and a fresh start. I think I will do the last few weeks of Hal Hidgon novice 2 for my half on April 10th.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

So I have finally got back on track with running. The wind has been terrible here, and combined with the dry air, I feel I really need to take a bath in lotion afterwards. But the temperature is nice. I'm feeling hopeful about WDW weekend happening, with the cruises maybe returning and I just got an email about the OC (California) marathon being in person this November.

At work we started a group for teens exploring mental health through books and film. The first book we are reading is Perks of Being a Wallflower. I had never read it or seen the movie. While I am liking it it reminds how hard high school is/was.

 

[Sleepless Knight]

I just finished the first Avengers and am on Iron Man 3. For some reason Disney+ doesn’t have the Incredible Hulk, I have never seen it but my sister said it was terrible so I skipped it. I may rent it from amazon, but it seems strange for it to be played by Edward Norton.

First off, welcome. This running community is very encouraging and has taught me a great deal about running which has helped me enjoy the training substantially more than I used to. Training always requires hard work and sacrifice with the race being the reward, but this community has helped me train better so it's not such a drain.

On the Hulk front, Universal still owns the theatrical rights to any solo Hulk film. The Hulk film in the MCU was released before Disney acquired Marvel and did not fare well at the box office. While the movie fits within the MCU, it is not very critical to follow the subsequent stories. The recent Spider-Man movies are also owned by Sony, so it will take some doing for them to ever wind up on Disney+. In case anyone is interested, to make a long story very short, back in the 1990s, Marvel was in dire financial straits. To survive, they had to sell movie rights for different characters to different studios and even theme parks drew up geographic lines and such which is why you can't meet some Marvel characters in Disney World, but can in Disneyland.

The Dopey enthusiasm is ridiculously hard to resist. I have yet to run an in-person race and am becoming more dopey-curious by the month.

I ran my first marathon as part of Dopey. I'm also crazy enough to have a run multiple half marathons before my first 10K, and then 4 multi race runDisney weekends before my first 5K. My path is strange and may not make sense for everyone. Personally as I ran more and more half marathons, I began to wonder about possibly running the marathon. But then I went out for a long run and realized just how spent I was at the end of long runs and wondered why in the world I would ever want to more than double that number. In one setting. Gradually as I read more and more training journals and race reports, I began to want to experience the feeling of the marathon for myself. But still I had to work up to it. After a long time pestering @DopeyBadger with my questions about how I could properly train for a marathon without running 20 miles every 2 weeks and his always patient and thought out explanations, I came to recognize that I needed to either take the plunge and trust the methodology or remain content with half marathons.

Ultimately, there is no wrong answer to that question. Some enjoyed the marathon. Others have run and not enjoyed the marathon. I do believe strongly that in order to run the marathon, you have to want it for your own reasons, whatever those reasons are. It can be to prove to yourself that you can do it. It can be to honor a loved one or close friend. Whatever your reasons they have to be your reasons. But the marathon will test you. It will test you during training and it will test you along the course, no matter how properly trained you are.

I have now run two marathons, both at Disney World, Despite brutally awful heat and humidity in both races, I finished and had a great experience both times. I look forward to hopefully someday running the marathon at Disney World again.

As for Dopey, many people shared this with me and I found it to be true. The training required for the marathon is not that much different than the training required for Dopey. Logging the miles and putting in the time is a great way to prepare for successfully meeting the challenge.

Lastly, my opinion on the marathon. It can be a great experience, but I also believe that it will be a better experience if you have multiple half marathons under your belt first. My second marathon was in absolutely brutal heat and humidity. As anyone who ran the 2020 Walt Disney World Marathon will tell you, that race was never to be forgotten They literally had to shorten the course because of the heat and humidity. In spite of all that, it was still easier than my first marathon simply because I knew what I was doing the second time around. So the more experience you have in knowing how to clear mental hurdles in distances such as the half marathon, the better prepared you will be when the marathon tests those skills in very new ways.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

I remember now why I normally don't race anything longer than a 10k in March/April. I hate wind! Running in wind in the worst of weather to me. Heat is hard but if makes you feel magically faster when you race in a colder location. Where I live in AZ is so windy in March, it ruins the almost ideal running weather otherwise. I cut my runs shorter than I planned due to this. Oh well.

I finished Thor: Dark World this weekend. This is a start of the movies I missed for some reason or another, it was my first time seeing it. I didn't really like it. The fix seemed to easy at the end, and I normally like Natalie Portman but I didn't buy they were in love, I found the time when she was like you were in NEw York how could you not stop saving the world and come find me! annoying too. It was great seeing Darcy again though! I am so looking forward to the Winter Soldier (never seen either!) as everyone says how good it is.

My sister gave me two reading chairs that are just the shade of Harry Potter Maroon. I decided to run with it and found an old trunk to use as a coffee table in the nook off of my kitchen. They had these removable vinyl sticker things on amazon I think, that are so fun. I also got a throw blanket of the marauder map. Before my monsters (cats) I had the lego hogwarts displayed, but that quickly was demolished. I'll need a case with glass or something. I have a plan to try to make some more decor for fun, like a dragon egg. There are so many creative people in the world and are so great to share their ideas for free online!

.

This week is stressful. My Dad who has kidney cancer, has his operation in Tucson tmrw. Due to Covid of course you cant visit him in the hospital or anything. My Sister who was in the ICU with covid we were able to look at her like a zoo animal through the window to the outside (She made a full recovery thankfully, her husband is a principal and many schools were back to in person at the start of fall brought it home). I asked my mom if she wanted me to come, but since it seems doubtful that in such a big hospital he would get a ground floor with a window, I didn't make the 3 hour drive. They aren't allowing any visitors even if you are vaccinated. I feel so bad for people who didn't get to say goodbye to their loved ones in person and have that last hug this past year. I'm trying to be positive but the unknown is always scary, even if as the doctor said if you have to get cancer this is a good one to get especially if caught early. He is lucky it is only in one kidney.

I am feeling hopeful about Dopey happening with all the other races that have been announced recently. And I'm really looking forward to running in a costume, ideally one with sequins. The race that was delayed until April is a Women's themed one, in the past I think butterflies? Anyway I may do a tink bound with a raw threads shirt and a sparkly skirt and call it race prep.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

First off, welcome. This running community is very encouraging and has taught me a great deal about running which has helped me enjoy the training substantially more than I used to. Training always requires hard work and sacrifice with the race being the reward, but this community has helped me train better so it's not such a drain.

On the Hulk front, Universal still owns the theatrical rights to any solo Hulk film. The Hulk film in the MCU was released before Disney acquired Marvel and did not fare well at the box office. While the movie fits within the MCU, it is not very critical to follow the subsequent stories.

Thanks! I may go back to it at a later date but I think I will just carry on with the series. The community is nice, as I don't really know any runners in real life,The town I live in is very small we dont even have a stoplight, so its wonderful to follow other people here.

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Good news is that the operation went well! Its amazing what both doctors can do and the human body. They did not end up taking the whole kidney but a mere half. Poor guy is still in the hospital, we are not sure when he will be able to come home. He sounds pretty pitiful on the phone, but it is his first surgery at almost 70, and he hasn't been away from my mom in years.

The weather has been delightful! The wind isn't too bad in the morning and it is sunny and cool then. I am doing a long run tmrw of about 11.5 ish miles. Originally I was going to do a 10 k on the 27th, but now that my half is moved to the tenth I'm not sure. I'm not really worried about doing the races so close as I would use the 10k more as practice than all out. Its the having to take off work, get a hotel, and then since I'm in a city I shop. If WDW marathon happens (cross my fingers), it seems to cost quite a bit more than more than normal Disneyland trips, so I really should be sticking to a budget, now. Having said that I placed an order for my first Magic Band! I pre-ordered Run Disney one. I know that one isn't really needed but it seems so easy to use it instead of pulling out your phone. And I have wanted one for so long. It was $15 and I have been reading lots about WDW, there is so much to do/eat. I booked Magic Kingdom for Sunday.

After my half on April 10th, I think I want to try to find a 10 k somewhere in may/june. I think I will use that time to focus on shifting some wieght. I find I can't train hard and lose weight at the same time (more than a couple of pounds). One or the other seems to suffer. I am signed up for a half in Provo at the end of july and than I want to do the Sandia crest Marathon (Albuquerque NM) and the end of Sept. Maybe a 5k here or there. I have to have a race on the schedule to make me run in the summer. Because I live in the middle of nowhere with hardly any pavement and pretty close to a river, it actually cools off here some at night unlike Phx, Im so impressed by people who continue running outside there. And when you are in cool weather you feel so fast!

I haven't watched any Marvel Movies this week, but I plan on watching the Winter Soldier tonight, it will be my first viewing and everyone seems to think it is a great one.

 

[shellott-hill]

I plan on watching the Winter Soldier tonight

Definitely my favourite!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

Definitely my favourite!

I did really like it!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

I don't know if this is something that happens to anyone else, but I really find my emotions are one day super optimistic - yes the pandemic is under control and we will definitely being having marathon weekend to vacillating to the opposite end and the pandemic will never end. The 10K I had been considering was cancelled, so that decision was made for me. My dad just got out of the hospital yesterday, it took way longer than any of us thought. He is just about 70 and this was his first operation, I think it threw him for a loop more than he expected. But he is home now and hopefully on the mend!

Running wise I have been sticking to my plan, and I have also started to clean up my diet. And I think the internet knows too. I can't tell you how many ads I am getting. The ones I have found so tempting to try is the one by Maggie q with the activated you powder, but its 50 bucks a month and I already take probitcs, so I resisted. In fact during the start of the pandemic, I added so many vitamins to my morning as some strange way to cope.

The weather here is delightful for running in the morning. Nice and not too hot, and the wind hasn't started up yet.

It was a hectic week, I only watched Winter Soldier but I really liked it. Next up is my favorite ride at California Adventure the Guardian of the galaxy.

 

[meye1099]

I don't know if this is something that happens to anyone else, but I really find my emotions are one day super optimistic - yes the pandemic is under control and we will definitely being having marathon weekend to vacillating to the opposite end and the pandemic will never end. The 10K I had been considering was cancelled, so that decision was made for me. My dad just got out of the hospital yesterday, it took way longer than any of us thought. He is just about 70 and this was his first operation, I think it threw him for a loop more than he expected. But he is home now and hopefully on the mend!

Running wise I have been sticking to my plan, and I have also started to clean up my diet. And I think the internet knows too. I can't tell you how many ads I am getting. The ones I have found so tempting to try is the one by Maggie q with the activated you powder, but its 50 bucks a month and I already take probitcs, so I resisted. In fact during the start of the pandemic, I added so many vitamins to my morning as some strange way to cope.

The weather here is delightful for running in the morning. Nice and not too hot, and the wind hasn't started up yet.

It was a hectic week, I only watched Winter Soldier but I really liked it. Next up is my favorite ride at California Adventure the Guardian of the galaxy.View attachment 565883

Love the photo! Your running route is so pretty and expansive!

 

[Blue Caterpillar]

My dad finally came home! He is on the mend.

Well my half marathon is Saturday. My last long run wasn't that great. I tried going a bit later in the day to mimic what I think the Temp will be in Tucson, and getting used to the heat is no fun! We had no spring, it went from a weird snowfall to a high of 90 in like a week this year. And not that the routes I run have much traffic anyway during the height of the pandemic I rarely saw any vehicles, you can definitely tell an uptick. I found myself looking forward to the semi's and the rush of wind they bring with them! I like a longer time to get heat adjusted It says 78 around 10 am, (when hopefully I am finishing) so a little cooler than I feared.

I'm trying not to have a time goal, but secretly under 2:30 keeps cropping up. So I may start a bit slower than that and see how if feels, and make adjustments from there. I will be going by myself for this trip. Originally my sister was supposed to come, but her kids had stuff come up. The Hotel looks really close to the Starting line. I bought a Rapunzel inspired tank- that says Race hair don't car, and I think I will wear it.

I haven't watched any Marvel movies this past week. Maybe at the hotel I will. I have also decided to try to resist the Falcon and the Winter soldier unitl I finish the series. Its so hard to avoid spoilers!

 

[DopeyBadger]

Good luck and have fun tomorrow!