Marathon Weekend 2022

[Cabius]

Looking for help on who to contact. I registered for Dopey yesterday (#2) and then my son (he's 15) for the 10k. I then went to register him for the 5k and after all was said and done my name is on the registration. It says minor and has his birthdate and lists me as the emergency contact. I sent something through the website (without any email yet) but who else can I contact to clear this up. It's just switching a first name....

Might be easier to just have his name legally changed. (I'm kidding, but sorry, I have no idea who to contact for this type of thing.)

 

[Marebear_runs]

Looking for help on who to contact. I registered for Dopey yesterday (#2) and then my son (he's 15) for the 10k. I then went to register him for the 5k and after all was said and done my name is on the registration. It says minor and has his birthdate and lists me as the emergency contact. I sent something through the website (without any email yet) but who else can I contact to clear this up. It's just switching a first name....

I did something similar for the virtual 10k this year. I put my name on my daughter’s registration but it had her birthday. I called the number on the website, 407-939-4786 and they switched it over the phone for me when I explained my mistake. Not sure if it was easier because it was virtual, but I hope they will take care of it for you!

 

[camaker]

Looking for help on who to contact. I registered for Dopey yesterday (#2) and then my son (he's 15) for the 10k. I then went to register him for the 5k and after all was said and done my name is on the registration. It says minor and has his birthdate and lists me as the emergency contact. I sent something through the website (without any email yet) but who else can I contact to clear this up. It's just switching a first name....

I‘d suggest giving them some time to respond to your initial request. RunDisney has an extremely small staff and likely has a lot of requests hitting them right now with registration for their largest event starting yesterday. There’s plenty of time to get it worked out.

 

[Marc A.]

I did something similar for the virtual 10k this year. I put my name on my daughter’s registration but it had her birthday. I called the number on the website, 407-939-4786 and they switched it over the phone for me when I explained my mistake. Not sure if it was easier because it was virtual, but I hope they will take care of it for you!

thank you for the number. I'll try this in a few weeks if I do not hear back.

 

[Marc A.]

I‘d suggest giving them some time to respond to your initial request. RunDisney has an extremely small staff and likely has a lot of requests hitting them right now with registration for their largest event starting yesterday. There’s plenty of time to get it worked out.

good idea!! thanks

 

[Disneyslowrunner]

Odd question, based on my POT, I am likely going to be placed in a faster corral than some family...if I want to start in a slower corral for certain races, can I? For example, I have friends signed up for the 10K, but will be in a way slower category, but I still want to run with them at their pace. I will be solo for the marathon, however, so I would rather keep the faster corral for that race.

 

[ZellyB]

Odd question, based on my POT, I am likely going to be placed in a faster corral than some family...if I want to start in a slower corral for certain races, can I?

Yes, you can drop back to a later corral. You just can't move forward.

 

[GreatLakes]

So, how did yesterday go for everyone? Did anyone not get the race(s) they wanted?

No issues here. I made sure I was at our main data center so I had three machines on three totally different carriers with three browsers each and then my phone. I was able to register and then shoot my wife a link to a queue with 2 minutes left. There was no rhyme or reason to the queue placing so I'm guessing everyone that was online before 10 was randomly assigned a queue space. Of the 10 browsers I had opened the one that had the shortest wait was the 5th one I opened followed by the 3rd. I purposely saved 2 that I didn't enter until right at 10 and they ended up being the longest.

What advice do you have regarding park touring during marathon weekend? Should certain parks be avoided on certain days/times?

The big thing to consider isn't really the specific parks and days but the energy you'll be expending compared to your race. If you are new to running and are worried about being able to stay ahead of the sweepers I would save my park days until after your race.

 

[FFigawi]

I know this is super premature, but have folks started thinking about crowd levels at all? I think it was the 2018 marathon weekend that last had dates similar to 2022, right? I was following from afar, but I remember horror stories about parks being at capacity since it was so close to the holidays, still.

It’s the end of the last holiday week. I imagine it’ll be pretty crowded through Saturday or Sunday until everyone leaves to get the kids back in school.

 

[pixarmom]

Love reading all the happy registration posts! Fantastic news - @mateojr decided he IS ready to try the half marathon! It's a physical and emotional challenge for this sweet guy on the autism spectrum, but we know he can do it! Then 22-yo son sent a text saying "sign me up!" @mateojr and I had 5 browsers going yesterday morning and one of them showed a 10 minute wait. We were able to secure all three half marathon registrations and there was much celebration! So marathon weekend for us is just the half with the goal of helping @mateojr over that finish line!

 

[pixarmom]

Looking for help on who to contact. I registered for Dopey yesterday (#2) and then my son (he's 15) for the 10k. I then went to register him for the 5k and after all was said and done my name is on the registration. It says minor and has his birthdate and lists me as the emergency contact. I sent something through the website (without any email yet) but who else can I contact to clear this up. It's just switching a first name....

We had a similar problem yesterday with my oldest son's half marathon registration. I called the runDisney Tech Department at 407-939-4786, pressed option 3. I was surprised that they answered right away and fixed it within minutes!

 

[Sleepless Knight]

What advice do you have regarding park touring during marathon weekend? Should certain parks be avoided on certain days/times?

As others have said, the pandemic makes this a very wild guess. My best recommendation would be to select the park(s) that are most important to you for post race medal photos/meals as your priority for the day and then roll with whatever comes crowd wise.

This is admittedly the wrong advice, but when I did Dopey in 2019 it was part of a family vacation. So it was races in the morning and parks at night. I didn't avoid any parks or any activities. I just treated it like a normal Disney trip.

Aside from the late nights, this is more or less how I've treated the parks when there for races. I do allow myself a whole lot more time sitting down or watching shows to rest my legs and try to avoid long standby lines. I usually head back to my resort for bed around 6:00 or 6:30 so I can be in bed by 8:30 or 9:00 for the race. It works for me.

The big thing to consider isn't really the specific parks and days but the energy you'll be expending compared to your race. If you are new to running and are worried about being able to stay ahead of the sweepers I would save my park days until after your race.

I will say that it really comes down to knowing yourself. I had run 5 different multi race challenge runDisney weekends and one half marathon near the end of my trip after my normal park touring before signing up for my first Dopey. By that point I already had a tried and true strategy of enjoying the parks while also taking in a lot of shows and/or sitting on a bench for 20-30 minutes as needed. Now if this is a rare trip, then you should consider that races will likely curtail your park time especially if the marathon is one of them.

I'm a back of the pack runner and this is about my norm:

5K: in the parks by 9:30am. Because they usually don't sweep the 5K, I have more time to stop during the 5K
10K: in the parks by 10:00am.
Half: in the parks by 11:30am.
Full: in the parks by 3:00pm.

 

[happ]

The big thing to consider isn't really the specific parks and days but the energy you'll be expending compared to your race. If you are new to running and are worried about being able to stay ahead of the sweepers I would save my park days until after your race.

I'm not new to running, just new to marathon weekend. I'm trying to figure out when to go where now that there's the park pass system.

 

[Kitty-chan]

I'm not new to running, just new to marathon weekend. I'm trying to figure out when to go where now that there's the park pass system.

I was at WDW for July 4 weekend, the first time I'd been with the park pass system. At that point, capacity was sufficiently reduced that even if a park was booked to capacity (ie, no more park passes available), wait times were still pretty manageable. Of course, all bets are off for where we'll be in January 2022!

If I were planning to spend any time in the parks during marathon weekend (or right before or after), I'd just book park passes for the parks I most wanted to see. Also remember that you can park-hop starting at 2pm, IF you entered the park you had a pass for in the first place (and of course if your ticket permits hopping, and if the park you want to hop to isn't closed to hopping due to capacity limits.

 

[LilyJC]

So, how did yesterday go for everyone? Did anyone not get the race(s) they wanted?

It definitely went a lot smoother than I expected/feared. After keeping an eye on the DLR tickets, TOD, OBB debacles with this system, I knew I wanted to wait until after 7am PST to hop in the queue. I joined first on my laptop, then my youngest’s iPhone 7, and lastly my iPhone 12 Pro Max. The laptop went to over an hour but dropped back to 30-40ish minutes pretty quickly. The iPhone 7 listed over an hour for quite some time, but my 12 Pro Max immediately jumped in at 5 minutes. I have no idea if any of this is relevant or just random IT luck, but I found it interesting. My husband was on his laptop and it also interestingly tracked the same time as my laptop throughout the wait.

We were thankful to get our Dopeys, but pretty quickly the, “what have we done?!?!?” kicked in.

 

[DisneyMountainWoman]

As others have said, the pandemic makes this a very wild guess. My best recommendation would be to select the park(s) that are most important to you for post race medal photos/meals as your priority for the day and then roll with whatever comes crowd wise.
Aside from the late nights, this is more or less how I've treated the parks when there for races. I do allow myself a whole lot more time sitting down or watching shows to rest my legs and try to avoid long standby lines. I usually head back to my resort for bed around 6:00 or 6:30 so I can be in bed by 8:30 or 9:00 for the race. It works for me.
I will say that it really comes down to knowing yourself. I had run 5 different multi race challenge runDisney weekends and one half marathon near the end of my trip after my normal park touring before signing up for my first Dopey. By that point I already had a tried and true strategy of enjoying the parks while also taking in a lot of shows and/or sitting on a bench for 20-30 minutes as needed. Now if this is a rare trip, then you should consider that races will likely curtail your park time especially if the marathon is one of them.

I'm a back of the pack runner and this is about my norm:

5K: in the parks by 9:30am. Because they usually don't sweep the 5K, I have more time to stop during the 5K
10K: in the parks by 10:00am.
Half: in the parks by 11:30am.
Full: in the parks by 3:00pm.

Question with being in the parks by that time, does that include going back to your room and doing a change? Or going strait to the park after the run?

 

[Sleepless Knight]

Question with being in the parks by that time, does that include going back to your room and doing a change? Or going strait to the park after the run?

Those times always include going back to my resort to soak my legs in cold water for 20 minutes and a shower, liberal application of sunscreen, and then heading to the parks via bus. For 5K, I like to have a light breakfast in a park. For 10K and half it's breakfast at the resort or race retreat for the half if it's offered. With the marathon being that late, I usually try to lightly snack after the race and schedule a meal as close to projected park arrival as I can. But that's tricky for obvious reasons.

Honestly, I'm always needing a shower after a 10K up at least. Bear in mind that my 10K time of 1:40ish including character stops can be comparable to my 5K time of 90 minutes because I have no problem stopping for a 5K photo if it interests me enough. I also take the 5K as slow as I possibly can to save my legs for the next 3 races when running Dopey.

 

[Barca33Runner]

I'm not new to running, just new to marathon weekend. I'm trying to figure out when to go where now that there's the park pass system.

Crowds for any of the specific parks are not really heavily influenced by the races. Epcot will have Half Marathon traffic early in the day on Saturday (unless they continue with the 11 AM opening time). AK will have Marathon traffic on Sunday early, HS until about noon and Epcot until about 1/2. All of this is assuming the same or similar courses to those in the past.

Marathon Weekend crowds are not particularly heavy in the grand scheme of WDW. Much more influential are Holiday crowds which, as others have mentioned, are likely to carry over into Marathon Weekend this year. Because of that there will almost certainly be lighter crowds the week following Marathon Weekend.

As far as which parks for which days? Your guess is as good as anyone’s. There isn’t really anything that heavily influences crowds to one park over another during the weekend. The vast majority of non-race visitors function as though they are unaware of the race’s existence.

 

[OopscDaizy]

First time posting and second time to rundisney. I'm in for the 5k and the half. My last half I did intervals and this time I'm hoping to *mostly* run the whole thing. Lots of training to do.

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

Andrew’s Marginal Running Information

This is a collection of running tidbits that I’ve learned over a few decades of running.

You mileage may vary (literally).

If you were to look at me, your first thought would not be “runner”, but our genes are what they are. So these are not the comments of someone tall and thin.

1. The line unintentionally left blank.
2. I started out training for my first half-marathon by running a quarter mile and then having to take a walk break and built up distances from there.
3. When I’ve had a long layoff without running, the first couple of weeks of training are miserable, and I have to push through it. After that, the endorphins start doing their thing and I’ll get to where I become antsy if I go more than a day or two without running.
4. For my first half-marathon, I fretted about not being able to keep a pace and stay ahead of the sweepers.
   1. The sweeper clock doesn’t start until the last runner starts
   2. A brisk walking pace will keep you ahead of the sweepers
   3. A friend of mine would walk the marathons and had enviable times. He would stride it out and stopped for nothing and would finish a half in under 2.5 hours.
5. I’m a proponent of the Galloway method, but modified for my own use. I have gotten to where I run for a mile or so and then walk for a short stretch.
6. As it turns out, for most races, there are helpful people handing out water every mile or 1.5 miles, so my walk breaks are to walk through the water station. This also allows me to drink that water without spilling most of it.
7. The whole key to the walking part is to only do 50 or 75 steps and resume running before your body starts to drop out of run mode.
8. Based on #5, I have never carried water with me for a race. I let people hand it to me.
9. I will carry some energy goo for a marathon, and even then I was pleasantly surprised that it was being handed out during the Disney marathon. I do like the energy beans and will carry some of them with me.
10. To keep some moisture in my mouth, I prefer hard candy or Mentos. I just tuck the candy into a cheek and let it melt and typically get 2 miles from each piece. Or some gum.
11. If you start getting shin splints, stop running and take a 2 week break. It’ll drive you nuts to not run that long, but it’ll be worth it in the long run. During your break, go buy new running shoes. When I had shin splints is when I bought my first pair of $100+ pair of running shoes. It turned out to be so totally worth it that I bought a second pair. My running shoes are just for running and I take them off as soon as I get back home and put on my everyday shoes.
12. I also try to avoid running on concrete; I’ll even run on the grass next to a sidewalk if I won’t turn an ankle. My preference is a local greenway with long boardwalks. Even asphalt is better than concrete.
13. For a 5K or 10K, I don’t bother with any tunes; besides the races being over quickly, there is usually enough music and celebration going on to provide entertainment.
14. Due to issues with chafing on my thighs, I wear short running tights as a physical barrier. Some people use anti-chafe sticks, but a physical barrier is what works for me.
15. Ditto for chafing in the show. What works for me is liberal use of moleskin between toes, plus wraps of surgical tape. I also use Injinji socks to help isolate my toes. There will still be chafing over the course of a marathon, but delaying the onset of chafing as long as possible is the key.
16. For a marathon, take a couple of tylenol when the pain kicks in. Motrin is a blood thinner, so use tylenol.
17. Make sure that you can un-knot your shorts before you get to a port-a-potty. Nothing worse than losing time over a stuck drawstring.
18. Unless you want to set a personal record at Disney, take the time for some photos with the characters. When I ran the marathon, I saw Disney characters that I had never seen before in many visits to the parks. Just pick your opportunities and don’t get caught in a long line.
19. My tendency was to stay on one side of the road or the other during a race. What I learned is that the course is measured apex to apex of the curves, so straighten out the curves and it will save yourself some steps over the course of the race.
20. I was around mile 20 of the marathon when my left arm went numb. My immediate thought was that I was having a heart-attack, but it was actually just from keeping my fist clenched for so long. The lesson learned is to periodically shake out my arms and hands, and to touch my thumb to my fingers and not make fists while running.
21. Take some $20 bills with you for massages after the race. For me, one massage of the legs after the half, and two massages, one for the legs and one for the shoulders after the marathon. After the marathon, my shoulders hurt and they told me it was due to holding up my shoulders and arms for so long. Get the massages; it is worth every penny.
22. When I ran the Goofy, I went into the parks after the half-marathon. The key was to get only in short lines and not spend very long standing.
23. The most amazing thing is the day after the marathon in the parks or even a resort and being applauded by Disney cast members.

Other tidbits:

• Buy some cheap sweatshirts at Walmart for the beginning of the race when it’s cold. You’ll toss them aside after you warm up and they get collected for charity.
• Moisture-wicking shirt cause some nasty chafing on men in half and full marathons. As cool as it will be at Disney, a thin cotton shirt will prevent chafing. The performance shirt can wick away the moisture from the cotton shirt.
• There is nothing like the monorail whooshing by and a full moon overhead at the beginning of a race.
• There can be a huge traffic jam leading to the staging area. Better to be dropped at the main road and use the short walk as your warmup.
• You’ll do better than you think you will.