I confess that I’m one of those people who likes to wear his medal around the theme parks after Disney races. I don’t often try to call attention to myself, but you really never get a chance to actually wear your race medals around that often. I’ll also admit that while I’m walking around feeling like the proverbial shit, it does take a little wind out of my sails when I see someone sporting three medals after running the Goofy challenge. I of course vowed to never, ever do the Goofy challenge – ever.
Then, I decided to put a team together for the Walt Disney World marathon weekend. Then, I decided I should run the race with the people I train. Then, I realized that some people are running the half marathon and other people are running the full marathon. Then, I decided to run the Goofy challenge.
It was a remarkably easy decision to make.
“I’ll just pick my slowest runners and pace them to their own personal records”, I thought, “It’ll be a piece of cake and I’ll finally get to strut around wearing those three medals!”
Then, a few weeks ago it hit me. 39.3 miles in 24 hours at any speed is not easy. Unless I want a repeat of my first marathon experience, I need to prepare. So, I’m working on it.
I’m also coaching cross country, which makes it a little more difficult to stick to a training plan. The head coach designs the workouts for the day and I basically end up running that workout with the team. The “kids” challenge me and I’m getting good workouts, but they’re not necessarily specific to a Goofy. At this point, I’m going with the flow and trying to work with my weekend long runs so that I hit mileage goals for each week. I’m getting some pretty intense speed work during the week so if I add the distance on the weekend, I think it will all work out in the end.
Today, however, cross country practice was cancelled. Since I was volunteering at a 5K over the weekend and missed my long run, I decided to solo for 10 miles today. Considering it was 4 PM, 83 degrees and about 99% humidity, my 1:28:10 was a pretty nice time. I felt strong in the last few miles, but I was most certainly happy to be finished at 10. I looked like I ran through a sprinkler. I’ll spare you the picture.
Haha! You should do the 5K in the morning with us and wear 4 medals Booyah! 😉
oooh. look at those medals… though i haven’t ran in 5 weeks, now i want to sign up for the goofy so i can get the tri-fecta again. 😉 although, the donald one doesn’t seem to “match” the others.
it’s really not that bad – you can do it! get in those long runs, some back to back, and you’ll be fine.
awesome, running the full with Team in Training this year. I was surprised how fast and easy it was to raise 2600.00.