Day One of the Dopey Challenge.
I thought I was there too early… turns out I was wrong. That or A LOT of people made the same wrong decision. I arrived at Epcot’s parking lot by 4 AM.
And because we didn’t pay enough already to register for this event, it wouldn’t be a runDisney event without this sign:
The lines were already atrocious to try and snap a photo with Pluto and Dopey. I successfully nabbed a pic with the lovable pooch…
But the Dopey line was, well, dopey long. I could’ve waited I suppose as I had an hour and change before the race was set to start… but I’m not sure I would’ve made it all the way through the meandering queue in time to start with the A corral.
After barely moving in five minutes, I got out of line and headed to the holding pens for the starts. I wound up waiting an awfully long time there so I guess I was both too late and too early for the pre-race festivities.
While waiting though I caught up with Nick Tarvin from TeamPizzaRacers. We chatted and got to talking to two guys in front of us who were from Australia. One was from Perth who swapped tales with Nick about their various IronMen experiences. The other was a guy looking to just do the 5K who the prior week had done a 30 minute 10K (!!) in Melbourne. I suspected he wasn’t going to be stopping for photo ops on this course but who knows? I will say once the fireworks fired I never saw him again.
As for the race itself, it’s perhaps best described as a series of running intervals broken up by stops to grab photos with our world famous Disney friends. Here’s a sampling from my camera… hopefully there’s some better ones snapped by the Disney Photographers.
After crossing the finish line in roughly 28/29 minutes, I made the trek back to the photo ops with Pluto and Dopey for finisher medal shots. The Dopey line was still long given that I could hear the race announcer just starting some corrals in the distance.
While waiting in the line to meet Pluto, I chatted with a cast member named Ricardo who said I did way better than he had done today as he had been standing there all morning. I told him he had the far tougher day as I at least got to talk to the characters while he was stuck dealing with the guests. He mentioned he wished he could get a photo with Pluto… hence I insisted he jump into mine. He hesitated and said he’d get in trouble but I insisted that the only way my day could be magical would be for him to be in my photo. Making magic for a guest trumps certain rules, hence:
As an aside, I loved this guy’s Oswald the Lucky Rabbit running outfit:
To runDisney’s credit, they ditched the vinyl plastic 5K medals and crafted metal ones for this year’s event.
Tomorrow: Minnie’s 10K.
But first… this: A spirit video from yesterday’s expo!