The Dopey Challenge — Day 2: Minnie Mouse’s 10K
In the staging area this morning, all anybody can talk about is what the weather forecast holds for this coming weekend. Projected thunder and lightning on Saturday has whispers of a shortened or cancelled half-marathon. Sunday is said to offer near freezing temperatures, bringing out tales of the notorious 2011 WDW Marathon; that year the water stops were black ice sheets, with cast aside water freezing as it hit the pavement and creating treacherous and the slipperiest of conditions for runners AND volunteers.
But that’s for worrying about later. Mom has braved the falling temps — it’s a surprisingly brisk 55 but feels much colder… there’s not a lot of wind but we seem to be standing in a low-lying fog… we are amidst the mist. We bump into Ricardo, the cast member I dragged into my Pluto photo the day before. He remembered me and as he was chatting with my Mom it turned out they had several World of Disney co-castmates in common. Six degrees of separation isn’t really a thing at Disney… it’s more likely two degrees. It is a small world after all…
The line to meet Minnie before the event was the stuff of lore — it seems like this whole runDisney experience has been a series of queues. Jokingly we mentioned they should have a FastPass option to bypass the line; I’m sure some Accountaneers (who I assume are the money “dreamers” who work alongside the Disney Imagineers) are cooking up a way to charge for that as I type this.
I waved goodbye to my Mom and headed for the corrals…
The moment of silence for those brave men and women who have given the last full measure and the National Anthem led into the final countdown to the start of the event. A few fireworks and we were off and running.
I once again ran with Nick Tarvin and as we did with the 5K, we dashed between photo opportunities, running the race as a series of sprints and intervals punctuated with “rests” to snag a pic with the Disney characters.
I appreciate mixing things up this year — our faves donned some different outfits and popped up at different locales, adding some variety to an event that was starting to ose a bit of its magical luster. And given that rain tomorrow may limit character appearances, I was all the more happy to snap a few shots today.
I should however have known better than to trust my iPhone’s camera to the dark conditions of pre-dawn photography. Most of the photos are blurry or under realized so fingers crossed the official pics turn out better. In the meantime, here’s a smattering of snapshots:
Nick and I, despite stopping for every photo opp they offered, wound up with net time’s of 46:43 or a 7:31 per mile pace. Not too shabby… not too shabby at all.
Post run, I caught up with my support team — thanks for coming out, Mom! — and we nabbed a few medal shots to close out the day.
All in, we were back home by 7:30 AM.
As I type this, the sun is shining and the day has really only just begun. This afternoon my brother is coming into town to help cheer me on. He was supposed to run the half tomorrow but injuries and life got in the way of training… but I’ll appreciate the support.
Having said that, if the weather is as bad as they say, I’ll suggest Mom and Steve cheer me on from home and we’ll celebrate post-runs well enough in the warmth of the indoors!
But, again, that’s all worries for another day.
***
Pre-Posting Update: Just as I was about to click “Publish” on this post, an email popped up from runDisney. Here’s the official word on tomorrow (which is basically “let’s wait and see…”).
Safety is obviously the most important thing here — here’s hoping if it does rain, it’s just a rain storm and not a lightning storm. Lightning, lightning go away… come again some other day.
To be fair, Florida IS the lightning capital of the USA… though not quite of the world; Rwanda has us beat. Speaking of which — I wonder if these folks have ever had to cancel their race due to lightning?