Springtime Surprise 2026 (Apr 16-20)

[fatmanatee]

I don’t know if people can tell me recent experiences with the new brackets for estimated time… last race I did was still less than 8:00/mile or 8:00-10:00
We will be running the 5K, and our pace for a 5K is usually about 7:30-7:45 min/mile…
Does everyone who want to be in the front now put less than 7:00min/mile or are people more respectful/honest and putting in real estimated times?

Since it will be my nephews’ first Disney race (and they are pretty fast runners!), I don’t want to be behind a large wave of people who plan to walk the 5K and just put the fastest time to be in front, but I also don’t want to be disrespectful to elites and lie about my time (I am also wondering whether they would check for POT for people who put less than 7:00/mile to make sure they qualify?)

I hope this doesn’t come out as weird as I am usually a rule follower, but I want to make sure I do what’s best for them!

It’s not weird. I’ll be very honest, I had a fairly frustrating time with crowding in the 5k and 10k this past January, particularly the 5k, after putting myself down as 8-10 min. Ended up getting put in corral C even though I got in B for the half/full via POT. For the 10k it seemed like the path eventually split up so that half the crowd was walking and half were running. Vividly remember having to weave around families with young children holding hands and walking four across in Epcot for the 5k.

I’m not sure what will happen with future races but I was very concerned about the impact of this new corral and how things went at MW so I’ll just say that I did not list myself with a 8-10 min pace when I signed up for my next races. The <7 min corral SHOULD be just for a few dozen sprinters, really should be given out via POT, and it’s going to be completely ridiculous if they end up with a bunch of walkers there.

First event with these new corrals will be the DL Halloween event btw, so we’ll hopefully get some feedback from there.