Last weekend me and my girlfriend completed the Walt Disney World - Dopey Challenge which consists of a 5k, 10k, 1/2 Marathon, and Full Marathon on consecutive days. The total is supposed to be 48.6 miles but with the extra walking to bathrooms, pictures, and side things it came out to about 50 miles on my Garmin.
Firstly the events are fun and if you stay at the Disney World Resort at a Disney Hotel they provide the transportation to the hotel/resort and all the events, including the runDisney Expo. Also if you stay at a Disney World hotel you get to their new MagicBands! This becomes your room key, park tickets, credit card... nearly everything!
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| Transportation from the airport |
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| Magic Bands! |
We arrived Tuesday night, had a nice dinner at The Flying Fish on the boardwalk (took a taxi). Great food, we really liked this restaurant. It was the best fine dining experience we had all weekend.
On Wednesday, took the shuttle to the Disney World ESPN Sports Complex to pick up our runner packets, drop bags, and jersies. We also picked up a Dopey Challenge commemorative pin and a couple other small items. It was all really well run and in the lines were smaller and moved quickly in the other buildings compared to the main expo center. They had a lot of new runDisney themed shoes too. Notice the little Mickey symbols inside the shoe!
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| Wide World of Sports |
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| runDisney booth |
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| runDisney Expo |
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| runDisney New Balance shoes |
We stopped and talked with our friends at Sparkle Athletic where my girlfriend picked up a pair of their Shwings (little wings that attach to your shoe) and also picked up a pair of Altra shoes where they had a nice expo price for them. We had a late lunch appointment at Fulton's Crab House in Downtown Disney and then tickets to Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba that evening so headed down there.
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| Fulton's Crab House is the boat |
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| La Nouba theater |
So... the running events... waking up and going to the 5k was not so bad. We got these cute pluto medals made of rubber. We spent the day at Animal Kingdom and returned to our room early in the evening. We went to bed as usual and made it to the 10k the next morning a little tired. After completing the 10k we headed to Epcot and spent the day there. We made it a point to return to the room early and get to bed by 8PM and wow it worked wonders because we were getting up at 3AM each day for the events.
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| 1/2 Marathon start |
We ran the 1/2 Marathon without issue. It went through Epcot and Magic Kingdom, ended early enough and we spend the day napping for a couple hours then headed off back to Epcot for the Pasta Dinner Party, we started walking back around 8:30 (since it opened at 7PM) and it started to pour! Wow! We got drenched and made it back into bed by about 10. Next time we are going to skip the pasta party since we really need the sleep to get up at 3AM each day, so we learned something. Excellent! However after getting our pictures with all the characters, we got back a little a later than intended. We only got about 5 hours of sleep before waking up to go to the full marathon.
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| Pictures with all the characters each event is themed with |
The full marathon was grueling but not as bad as anticipated. We ran through all four parks and I was tight and a little sore from the 1/2 marathon the day before. So I went it at a slow pace but it was great running through some incredibly cool areas of the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. I tried all I could to keep up with the 4:45 group but ended up finishing at 5:11ish.
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| Walt Disney World Marathon start |
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| Disney Speedway (we got to run around the whole race track and they had lots of cool cars to take pictures with) |
Overall we had a great time running the events, it is really well organized and the bling was worthy of every minute running. We got to visit all the parks and even spent time with a friend, all on this trip. Will I ever try the Dopey Challenge ever again? I really don't think so but it was a wonderful experience to run the Inaugural Dopey Challenge and the Inaugural 10k to get those limited edition keepsakes. Thanks runDisney, Disney World, and all volunteers and workers that made this a really cool event!
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| Epcot during the 5K |
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| Thanks for the magical memories! |
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