…wins no races but does get you to the finish.
Proof positive that slow and steady just puts you on display:
Back to the story… which is appropriate for an event billing itself as celebrating storybook tales!
In the end, it was my slowest marathon at a proper 26.2 mile event in 12 years. There have been trail events and snafus with course markings that took longer, but at a standard road race? Twelve years. And that was a race where I was dehydrated and sick.
Was it the cumulative effect of four days of early rising and racing? It’s happened before – 12 times over the last 13 years (one year was made virtual by Covid), and I ran these events much faster in prior years.
Was it the lingering injury that sidelined my training and left me a bit wobbly on my feet? Maybe… but honestly though my leg was bothering me during the run, it never felt like a painful death march. It mainly felt like… extreme fatigue. I would list in my running, drifting to one side as I was probably overcompensating for the injury. Or maybe it was that my stride was much shorter due to the leg’s tightness… and thus I was taking WAY more steps to compensate for the shorter distance every footfall was taking.
Nick was a sport and tolerated my slowed gait… and in the later stages of the course my intervals between running and walking growing shorter and shorter… or perhaps more clearly, we walked a whole lot of this race.
In the end, though, we finished the race, the challenge, the day. And that’s not nothing.
A photo album:
Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dopey… that’s me, in the middle.
The Star Wars corridor, with a killer soundtrack and some fine photo ops… it helped gussy up a section that in years past always felt a bit… mind numbing.
Animal Kingdom pics…
The Star Wars corridor was great… even if it meant we lost my Adventurers’ Club reunion pics (I did miss seeing them this year… #AdventurersClub4Eva!). But then there’s a long drag on the highway into the Blizzard Beach parking lot… which is literally the only part of any course I might advocate cutting. That’s how bad this section is. And to be honest, with the ping-ponging and Garmin errors, I could’ve done so and STILL had 26.2 miles on my GPS watch… so there’s that.
An all too brief run through Hollywood Studios… culminating in meeting the emotions that encapsulates a marathon run: joy and sadness. Albeit they probably also should have had Anger, Anxiety, and maybe Disgust while we’re at it!
The final miles back into Epcot — the Boardwalk and a quick chat with my conscience…
The Finish Line pics…
Culminating in one of the best moments of the weekend… I bumped into Mari-Mar of TravellingFit fame. She and her Australian running tour company are second to none in this business. If you’re looking to book a tough to get to event, run, don’t walk over to TravellingFit’s website… even if you’re not an Aussie.
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And one final note before I crawl into a post-Dopey coma:
Nick — see ya next year, pal! Thanks for your patience and good running company, man!