Marathon Weekend 2026

[WDW 4 ME]

because still after 10+HM I still don't think of myself as a runner)

Yes!!! Why is this?! My orthopedist the other day referred to me as an athlete and I looked around to see who he was talking to! And when I go to the doctor and my resting heart rate measures low they ask if I’m a runner. I respond with “I run a little bit”. I feel like an imposter!!!

 

[Disney at Heart]

Many have heard my story before, but here it is! I was born when Disneyland opened and loved watching the Wonderful World of Color on television, but my family of seven had no money for vacations. After all, my parents were saving to send five children to college!

College is where I met a young man right out of basic training and started riding a bicycle beside him as he ran! Ten+ years and two sons later we went to WDW with other family members in 1992 and had a blast. Meanwhile DH had been increasing distance and thought he was ready to run a marathon, so looking through Runners World magazine, he saw that WDW was planning their first ever Marathon! He cut out the application, filled in the form, and mailed it in. He has only missed three marathons since then because he couldn’t get off work. He is still Perfectly Goofy and has run 100’s(?) of Disney races, as well as local and not so local races, and trail/ultra races, culminating with the Georgia Death race. (He has a 36 year streak with Peachtree Road Race.)

And me? I loved all the run-cations, but had no interest in running. After all, I had two children to raise and 1000’s of students to teach (mostly high school English and yearbook, but through 32 years taught grades five-college sophomores). I had no time to train! So in 2013 at age 58 I was about to retire and told DH, “I think I’ll run with you.” He trained me and in 10 months I was ready for the Tower of Terror 10 miler, then at 59 the WDW 10K/ half, and at 60 WDW 5k/ Marathon. Since then I’ve run 2 Dopeys, 6 “just” Goofys, and will complete another in January at almost 71. In addition, we’ve done W&D, Star Wars, 2 Coast to Coast, and various non-Disney races and challenges. I know, late bloomer!

As I read your stories, I REALLY want to meet you all! Come to the meetups and let’s put faces to these stories!!!

 

[rick1zoo2]

SAFD:

When I was turning 50, I decided I wanted to have a real vacation (with work, kids and too much debt, it just got moved to the back burner for many years). I narrowed it down to two possibilities: Paris or WDW. I decided I wanted to go where people would be happy to see me, so I decided on Disney (figuring that people in Paris didn't like tourists). That vacation was the most amazing time I had had in my adult life and WDW became a place where we went more and more. A few years later, my husband said "you know, they have races there, should we sign up for one?" We got shut out of the 10k so we signed up for the springtime challenge. We never ran before signing up. We started by going to a local track. Those first few runs were barely 2-3 laps. A couple of years later and we have run every runDisney race at WDW since then, finishing all but the marathon last year. We have also gotten my husband's youngest son and my sister running. What a difference it has made in our lives.

This is all entirely your fault...thanks

So I first went to WDW twice back in the 1970's so I have always been a fan. In high school I ran cross country and track, but stopped after that. We retired just over two years ago and 'someone' wanted to start running, so I reluctantly joined in. We had been visiting WDW on a regular basis at that point, so when we discovered the runDisney races, it seemed to make sense. As Erika said, we signed up for the 2024 Springtime Surprise Challenge as that was the only thing left during registration, so we had some months to prepare for it. We also registered for the next race weekend (Wine and Dine) before we did our first. We had a great experience and have done each race since, learning a lot more as we go. We are looking forward to completing the Dopey challenge. It all makes sense as it has given us something to do together, fits in with our goal of staying active and healthy and another great way to enjoy WDW. All of the awesome support here has made it that much better.

 

[The Expert]

Can’t even get started on how many people we have brought into our group. In MW 2024, it was the two of us and our parents. Then in 2025, we had 7 runners across MW. This year we are looking at 13! All family/friends running 1+ races. It’s gonna be an awesome trip.

This happened to me too! None of my family members were runners or even into recreational fitness, so it was a bit of a shock when my mom, aunt, MIL and two nephews decided to join me for various races at Princess 2017, a year after I started. I think the fun was just contagious! For the next few years, different family members would join in for a race here and there, but for the most part it's back to just me doing them with my rD friends.

As I read your stories, I REALLY want to meet you all! Come to the meetups and let’s put faces to these stories!!!

THIS! And if you haven't met @Disney at Heart and DH you really need to -- they are the BEST!

 

[Herding_Cats]

SAFD:
I'll give the runDisney-specific "origin story." Running was stupid, and I thought at one point that the Dopey Challenge was related to drinking around the world at Epcot (and when I looked it up to see what it actually was I said things like "People do that ON PURPOSE?")

We went do disney in the mid-20-teens for Christmas. And then we went again 2 years later with DH's entire family (a group of around 24) for which I was the trip-planner. That's when I discovered the disboards and where the screen name comes from. This is where my real appreciation for the magic of disney came from. Plus there was that whole thing of growing up in the early 90s and all of the amazing animations that came out during my childhood.

During that 2nd trip we stay an extra 5 days at AoA (this was the year that it was SUPER cold for the 5k and 10k...all of the resort pools were closed....and hot for the marathon.) I vividly remember walking to Animation Hall for breakfast with frost on the Cars, and seeing people come back in costumes including a guy in a full-body padded Mr Incredible suit and wondering what the heck was going on.

Fast forward to 2020 and SIL had tried to talk me into running a HM for her birthday (I scoffed HARD) and then I stumbled across information about Princess weekend and convinced her (and our husbands) that we should do a girls weekend and run the 10k in 2021. We booked everything through a TA, including the bibs in like...the end of June. And of course that got cancelled, but I was down the rabbit hole, and in the disboards here at that point.

I talked DH into me doing the marathon for my birthday, as a bucket list item, and he ran the 5k and 10k on his own and I ran Goofy in 2022. Followed by 3 Dopeys. And now (hopefully) and other Goofy. And I'm finally signed up for races during PW, 5 years after the original attempt!

As a side note, thanks to the boards, I recognized @The Expert in my corral the morning of my first disney HM and we decided to try running together and it worked out so well that we've run every HM or M together that we are both in at Disney since! Our "Not So Fast" team has grown and we finished as a group of 4 this past January, I ran with @Mr_Incr3dible 2 marathons ago, and I ran for a little while for the HM with @Disney at Heart this past MW. The light pole meetup is now a "must" and I think we are still going to try for the HH meetup for at least a few minutes (DD is a major X factor) this upcoming race weekend.

 

[jmasgat]

SAFD: Short answer: Disney convinced me I could run the Boston Marathon—a truly mind blowing idea for a previous non-runner.

Long Answer: When your DH runs and your DD runs and your DS (reluctantly) runs, eventually you figure why not me. So the year I turned 50 (2008) I took up the challenge and signed up to run the Minnie 15k. My main Disney years (with the kids) were behind me, but I somehow found the old WISH forum and made it through that race, and met some people that I still know today. Then I thought “well maybe I could do a half” (2009) and then after that “well maybe I could consider a full (2010) where I did well enough to think “Boston?” (I’m a native Masshole, so that’s a big deal). FF to fall of 2010 and I managed a BQ time and in 2011 I ran a race that I never in my wildest dreams thought I would run.

My Disney days are waning and my racing days as well, but I will always appreciate what RunDisney has helped me discover about myself and what I could accomplish.

 

[PrincessV]

SAFD: my “origin story” doesn’t have much of a specific origin, nor is it much of a story, but here goes…

Lifelong athlete, recreational runner since childhood because it feels good and makes me happy. Never raced until rD.

Enjoy Disney, but I mostly visit WDW because it’s close (less than 100 miles from home) and a relatively inexpensive getaway without a big family in the mix. Truthfully, if I lived farther away, I’d probably stop visiting altogether and be perfectly happy with that, so definitely not an uber fan, despite being a frequent visitor.

2012 MW, I visited a friend who’d run the half the previous day, and we met up in DHS. The back maybe 1/4 of Marathoners were running through DHS as we arrived, so we stopped to cheer and I was shocked to see that they looked like normal people, not professional runners. My ex was a competitive, but not pro, triathlete, so I guess I knew that normies did races, but this was a different scene and I was intrigued. So when I got home the next day, I looked up rD, saw they had a 5K coming up the next month alongside the PHM, and registered my son and myself to try it. The rest is in my signature history, lol!

Funny thing is, I’ve gone from running every race WDW offers to fewer and fewer of them the last few years. I skipped W&D this year, and won’t be running any MW races in 2026. Part of it is aging… a larger part is changes to race weekends that make them less enjoyable to me… and I’m pretty priced out, too. I’ll probably still pick and choose a few rD races to do each year as long as I still live nearby, but it’s feeling a bit full circle these days: I still love running, but I’m not sure I still love racing. I’ll see how I feel at the end of this much reduced cycle!

 

[Disney at Heart]

It all makes sense as it has given us something to do together, fits in with our goal of staying active and healthy and another great way to enjoy WDW. All of the awesome support here has made it that much better.

Yes! This^ too!

THIS! And if you haven't met @Disney at Heart and DH you really need to -- they are the BEST!

Thanks! You are a sweetheart, and I always look forward to seeing you and your cute running costumes!

 

[WDW 4 ME]

REALLY want to meet you all! Come to the meetups and let’s put faces to these stories!!!

I really want to!!!!!

 

[Mr_Incr3dible]

SAFD: My mom was a huge Disney fan, so I grew up on Wonderful World of Disney on Sunday nights, and I don't think I saw a non-Dis movie until I was 12. Our only family vacation was to WDW when I was 18. I did cross country in jr high, and did some jogging post-college, but nothing serious. When I moved back to Atlanta, one July 5th several people around me were just buzzing about how great the Peachtree Road Race was, and I wound up with FOMO and decided to train for the next year (1994 IIRC).
Then I married another Disney fan and we would go down there once or twice a year, but at that point my running was mostly PTRR and the occasional 5K. I remember remarking to her on one visit that it would be cool to run through the WDW parks, and then found our somehow that they did do races in the parks. Either we were there on a race weekend, or I saw something on the then-new internet. I wound up on the Disneyrunning.com forum and from there decided to try a half marathon. Me?! A half? Is that even doable?! But I trained, and did it, and figured it was one-and-done. That was 2009.
I missed the 2010 Ice-capades but wound up back again in 2011 for the Goofy, which was my first full marathon.
Divorce and work kept me away until 2022, but in the interim I went to a high school reunion and was amazed at a photo of a gaggle of medals on a bedspread. What is this? The Dopey! Which then became a hill to conquer.
During covid, I started back to running to get out of the house and get some exercise, and in 2022 visitation and work and vacation time were all going to line up for MW, so I signed up for the Dopey and began training with my half-@ssed method. Ran the Dopey and had a blast, and was thankful for @Herding_Cats company for the second half of the marathon. I can say from that experience that having someone else for conversation/accountability/antics sure makes the miles go by easier.
That Dopey got me all-in with rD and subsequent running. The only non-Dis marathon (so far) is the MCM two years ago, and now I'm looking at destination runs for some of the others I'd like to do.
Not only have I dropped 20 pounds in the last 5 years, I feel so much better and my overall health is better. (FWIW, I did a ten mile long run yesterday and could go do a 3 mile easy run this evening. Five or six years ago, that would have been laughable. ) Plus I do enjoy getting to see members of this forum IRL at race weekends and our HH meetups. And a few times, I've run into fellow rD members at the Expo, in the corral, or at the local grocery store!
So running has become one of my main activites/obsessions over the past five years, to the point where I've started a youtube with running info, plus the ability to blither on for hours about Disney, running, running and Disney....
Oh, and add me to the list of people who have gotten others to enter rD races and get pulled into the vortex.

 

[garneska]

SAFD: One of my favorite questions, since I don't answer often. This is probably something you have all heard before. I was a life long Disney lover but did not take my first trip to WDW till 1997 when i was 23, with my parents. Yes my first visit to the park was when the castle was that darn pink cake. In the mean time i ran track in high school and ran for fitness after that. Got married in March 2000, but we had just started new jobs so we did not go on a honeymoon until Feb 2001. We stayed at Yacht Club in concierge. I was going out for a run, because again i ran for fitness and the concierge asked if i did the marathon the previous month. I stopped in my tracks and said there is a marathon at Disney World. By the time i checked on running at Disney, i was shut out of 2002. I did sign up for my second marathon which was Jan 2003. I was not part of the WISH group but i knew of them. I first started posting on disneyrunning.com i think. i know it was not disboards at the start. We moved over here fairly soon though.

 

[nancipants]

SAFD: I was not always a huge Disney fan, but growing up in Florida, it was always on the periphery. I moved to Orlando for college and worked at Universal for a bit, so most of my time was spent over there. (Broke college student who did NOT have money for Disney tickets, so employee comp tickets to Universal were very much appreciated.) I attended Star Wars Weekends a few times, and did an occasional day at other Disney parks, but throughout my 20s I mostly visited Pleasure Island (RIP) and Downtown Disney. Around 2011, I got one of the Florida resident four-day ticket deals and used it for Star Wars Weekends and a few other days, but my ex-husband wasn't really into Disney, so getting an AP didn't make sense. Then we got divorced, and I finally got an AP right before Star Wars Weekends in 2012. I've been a local AP ever since!

As for running, that came much later. I always hated running and thought the people walking around the parks with their medals were nuts. Then the Star Wars races were announced, and I signed up for the 5k, although I mostly walked. A friend of mine started doing the Princess half in memory of her daughter, and I went to spectate one year, but still had no interest in actually running. I kept trying Couch to 5k with minimal success. Then, in 2022, a group of friends came down for Princess, so we all signed up for the 5k. I had a blast with them and decided I wanted to try the 10k in 2023. I didn't start training until the next January, when I found the Galloway program online and realized I could run/walk. Game changer! I actually enjoyed running and loved the 10k. Then I decided to try the half in 2024. Then, after much hemming and hawing, I decided I wanted to try the marathon in 2025, since it was on my birthday. And despite telling my husband "I'm never doing that again!" in the reunion area, I'm now I'm training for my second.

 

[marty3d]

Yes my first visit to the park was when the castle was that darn pink cake.

Don't worry - we went to WDW for our honeymoon that year so we have the giant pink cake in all our pictures.