Oh boy, oh boy! Registration is coming up fast for the 2024 Wine & Dine Half Marathon Weekend! In fact it’s on Tuesday, March 12 at 10:00 a.m., ET! If you’ve been through the registration process before you know that you need to be online and logged in to your runDisney account ahead of that, really no later than 9:45 before the games begin. If this is your first time through, I recommend checking out my post about registration.
I’m registered for the chal lenge already through Club runDisney, and I told myself that for the 2024-25 season, I don’t need to run all the races, I need to save up some cash. But flerdyschnerkenhoopy torp, they had to trot out the Swedish Chef for the 5K mascot, and this child of the 70s cannot resist, bork, bork, bork! So it looks like I get the great joy of joining the masses for general registration on Tuesday to try to score that race. To my knowledge, this is the first-ever Muppet-themed race, so I’m expecting a lot of shenanigans.
Post-Race Party – November 3, 2024 – $110 (remember that if you run the Half Marathon/Challenge, your Post-Race Party ticket is included. This is for extra tickets for guests and those not running the Half).
Some race merchandise is available at the time of checkout, though I recommend you actually complete your checkout first and then go back and buy the merch, if you want. Check out this adorable chef’s hat:
Got questions? I can help! Drop a comment, and good luck on registration day!
Looking at the calendar, I think a lot of us are starting to feel a little anxiety about upcoming races, and this year’s Dopey Challenge has me squirming a little. I have precious few outdoor long run opportunities between now and then. Even though Dopey is months away, my work schedule rachets up to insane levels during the fall, including weekends. If that weren’t enough to deal with, the weather is going to take a turn that excludes this cold-phobe from communing with nature very soon.
Two weeks ago was my less-than-satisfactory half marathon, and last weekend I took off to… well.. go ride Tron. I think it was worth it, but I missed a week of training to feed my Disney addiction. So I was quite anxious to get out today for a REALLY long run, to try to make up for not running last week. I often bite off more than I can chew planning long runs, and today was one of those days.
My nutrition has been good all week and I hopped to bed early in high hopes of getting at it bright and early. Then I checked the forecast….rain, rain, rain. I felt a little defated and resigned myself to running on the treadmill. Boooo. When I got up, I took my time and putzed around a little. Just before heading to the basement I decided to confirm the weather. No rain, at least not yet.
I quickly pivoted my plans and decided to head out to my trail. Who knows when I’ll get to do a long run outside again. I had everything in place: fuel, water, electrolytes, sports beans, and my latest experiment, pickle juice.
All was well at the start, but as I got up to mile 2, I just was not feeling it. At all. Maybe it was some new medication I am taking, or maybe it was a bad roll of the dice, but I knew my planned 16 miles was totally out of my grasp. I was thinking about the drizzle, and how awful it was that time I was 10 miles away from my car in a downpour, so I decided to walk. I could have turned back, but that would really have felt like defeat. So instead I used my much more relaxed pace to do something I rarely make time for: taking some pictures on my beautiful rail trail.
I really am lucky to have such a beautiful place to train. Mostly in the woods, on a well-packed dirt trail. It’s pretty ideal. I know every tree, and have names for all my landmarks like “The Mile Tree”, “The Cliffs of Coldness”, and “Whale’s Back”, and “Tail of a Whale”, to name a few. I often think about how the trail was constructed. In some places it’s elevated maybe 100 feet from the landscape below, built with unfathomable volumes of dirt moved in from somewhere else, at a time when most of it would have been done manually. In some places, you can see the old bones of the railroad ties resting in peace under a blanket of moss. I’m so glad that this trail is still enjoyed today by so many enthusiastic runners, bikers, and dog-walkers. It’s always really well-maintained, with washouts patched up regularly. If trees come down during storms, they are always removed within hours… people love the trail and everyone pitches in to keep it in top shape.
I hit my turn-around point and was feeling a bit more energetic and decided to start running again. I knocked my intervals way down to 30-second runs and headed back, arriving at my car just before the rain started for real. In the end I managed about 11 miles, more walking than running. But 11-miles walking is still way better than 0 miles on the couch. It wasn’t what I hoped for, but I am Dopey, and I don’t give up! Running when you don’t feel like it is hard, but it still counts. It’s the kind of stuff that grit is made of.
Disney Park Runner 