Hello, my name is Jamie and I am a marathoner. I thought perhaps a reintroduction was in
order. You know, since I am officially
an elite endurance athlete. OK, I admit
that’s laughable, but only .5% of Americans (per this)
have ever run a marathon. So yeah – that
puts me in a pretty small group. I’d
bet the percent of obese people is even smaller, but since they don’t take your
BMI at the start line I’m sure there are no reliable statistics!
I guess I should’ve included a spoiler alert, huh?
I FINISHED THE 2015 WALT DISNEY WORLD MARATHON!
It’s taken me a few days to figure out how to approach this
race recap, and finally I decided to not do my standard recap for the following
reasons:
- I work for a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company, so it’s not entirely appropriate for me to provide commentary on Disney products and services. (although I have to say this was by far the most well-run race I have ever been in. I saw literally ONE broken mile marker sign, and nothing more serious than that!)
- Although I had a goal pace (15 minute/mile), my ultimate goal was to finish and have fun along the way. I never treated this as a “race,” but as a life experience.
- My brain has mostly categorized memories of the race into feelings (i.e. “things that made me cry”) rather than distances, which would make a traditional recap kind of strange.
- This race was more about me and the people I ran with than about the surroundings.
That said, if you’re considering the leap from half marathon
to full marathon, this post might be helpful for you. But know in advance that I’m not writing this
post for anyone but me. It’s going to be
long (300+ words before any talk of the actual race? Yeah – that’s a sign of
things to come!), but the race was long.
The training was long. And darn
it, I’m not going to short-change my memories for the sake of brevity!
I’m going to take just a second to introduce the main
characters in my story:
Jamie (me): 35,
first-time marathon runner with 13 halfs under my belt. I’ve only managed to finish one of those in
under three hours, and I currently do long run intervals of 25 seconds running/40
seconds walking. (after this marathon
though, I’m officially bumping that up to 30/40 for my next races)
Jackie: 40’s, has
run the WDW Marathon multiple times. She
did the Dopey Challenge last year, proclaimed that she hates this marathon
course and didn’t think she’d ever do it again.
Then I said I wanted to register, and she immediately signed up for this
year’s Goofy Challenge so that I wouldn’t have to do my first marathon alone. She and I met during the Orlando Half in
2013, when we were both weak-legged from Space Coast the week before. By the end of that race, we were already
Facebook friends. I think we ran about a half-dozen races together in 2014.
Sarah: 30, signed
up for the Dopey Challenge having never done any distance races. At the beginning, she said she hated running
but Dopey and Goofy were her favorite characters so she might as well do all of
the races at once to get it over with.
(she’s already signed up for three more race weekends with me before the
end of February – I think she’s hooked)
We worked together in my last job, and compared notes during
training. She also did two of my longest
training runs with me, even though I’m slower than she is.
Sarah and her sister ran the first 2.5 races of the Dopey
Challenge together, but they split off around mile 9 of the half marathon and
decided not to even attempt the full together.
This ended up benefiting me, because it meant Sarah would be starting
with Jackie and me. She said she’d
probably stick with us for the first mile or two and then go on at her (much
faster) pace. As it turns out, she stuck
with us past mile 14 and was there for lots of my “big moments.” Jackie, as promised, stuck with me to the
end.
Sweet Emotions
I joked the days before the race that I was taking on the
“Grumpy Challenge.” This was the perfect storm of combining race nerves
associated with your first marathon with a week of major PMS. I cried, I hated people, people hated
me… I’m sure I still owe a person or two
an apology, though I tried my best to only yell on the inside. By the Thursday before the race, my mental
clouds had lifted and I was left with optimism and excitement (and the unfortunate
knowledge that the “P” in PMS stands for “pre,” which is all I’ll say about
that except that “super plus” is a real thing and it is amazing).
In the car on the way to the race, I started to get choked
up thinking that this was the big day and how hard I’d trained, etc. To stop myself from getting all emotional, I
told Jackie we should keep track of the number of times I choked back tears
during the day. “ONE!” I think I hit four before we even parked the
car! Other things that set me off: getting
into our corral (where I promptly yelled, “I’M IN MY CORRAL,” which the people
around me didn’t seem very impressed about!), seeing the fireworks going off
for the corrals ahead of ours, our fireworks going off, passing the start line
(where I yelled, “I’M RUNNING A MARATHON!”)… you get the picture!
The first tears escaped my eyes right after we exited Magic
Kingdom and turned onto Floridian Way.
There were speakers set up playing “Best Day of My Life,” and they had a
poster that said “You are running a marathon. This is the best day of your
life.” Before I knew it, I wailed
“ohhh…this IS the best day of my life!” and hot tears streamed down my
cheeks. Sarah grabbed her camera and
took pictures, and Jackie was nice enough to pose as well, pointing and
laughing at my ‘ugly cry’ face. I’ve
never happy-sobbed before. It’s an
amazing feeling, but sobbing makes it hard to run. Still, we managed to keep our intervals up!
My next big moment, though tear-free, was about two miles
later at the point where the marathon course no longer follows the same route
as the half marathon. At the exact
moment we left Floridian Way and turned into the TTC parking lot toward the WDW
Speedway, “The Impossible Dream” cycled on.
It was a perfect moment!
I almost cried inside the Sports Complex (mile 18 or 19)
when “This is the Moment” started playing.
Seriously – look at the lyrics for that and YOU try to not cry while
actively pursuing a check on the bucket list!
Just before entering the Studios (mile 22+), I looked at
Jackie in amazement and pointed out that we were now officially off the public
roadways and wouldn’t be swept. We then
rounded a corner and saw volunteers handing out Hershey’s Miniatures. I took a Mr. Goodbar, popped it into my
mouth, and burst into tears again.
Something about the combination of chocolate and major milestone was too
much for me!
Finally, I officially lost
it within sight of the finish line. I
always kind of figured I’d finish. I had
trained well, and things had gone really well during the day. My confidence grew to “I think we’re really
going to do it” when we passed the sweep point.
But something about seeing the finish line and knowing I could
hop/crawl/roll to it and there were only a few hundred feet between me and my
goal? Oh my GOD! I cried again, and Jackie got this
picture. Then we started running toward
the finish line, threw our arms into the air, and DID IT! After that, I pretty much sobbed on and off
for the next two hours. I was so happy…
and so tired… and so many other emotions.
It was just too much to process!
Flat Tires and Other
Shoe-Related Crises
I had my first crisis-that-wasn’t-really-a-crisis as we were
running the tunnel under the water bridge between Bay Lake and the Seven Seas
Lagoon (around mile 4.5). The guy
running behind me stepped on the back of my shoe and it left my foot
completely. “Shit! My Shoe!”
He picked it up and handed it to me, but we were on a bottleneck part of
the course, without a shoulder (we were actually against the cones separating
us from traffic), so I started to walk with one shoe, figuring I’d have to wait
until we got to the top of the tunnel to put it back on. Sarah’s logical engineer brain kicked in, and
she told me to just stand between two of the cones and put the damn shoe back
on. That worked, and I was able to get
my shoe back on (I’m not sure, but there may have been some “where’s Prince
Charming?” jokes flying) without causing a major back-up of runners passing us.
A few miles later, while inside the Speedway, I realized I
had a pebble in my shoe. This time, I
went to an infield wall, kicked my foot up above hip-height (seriously, how I
managed to not pull a hamstring during this race is beyond me!), and shook out
the pebble. That was the point when I
realized I was being quite rational about this whole marathon thing. Eight miles into a half, I probably would’ve
shaken the pebble to the toe of my shoe and kept going. But I figured doing so with 18 miles to go
was a recipe for disaster.
I had another pebble in the Sports Complex, and stopped at a
picnic table to shake that one loose.
There was a runner laying on the bench attached to the next table,
waiting for a medic. I think he was
overheated or something. I saw a bunch
of people who wouldn’t finish during the day, and was so thankful every time that
my training/luck/karma/spirit/body was stronger than theirs.
Our Support Crew
Part of my “Grumpy Challenge” was knowing that I didn’t have
a Jamie out on the course for me this year.
Last year, I solicited requests from my running friends, and was camped
out at a corner they passed around miles 16.5 and 20.5. I had drinks and snacks, and made a poster
and cheered on all the other runners.
Although some people said they would be out cheering, none would commit
in advance to a spot and I finally realized I was going to have to be my own
Jamie. So I made “runner love kits” with
special things for me (Combos and orange soda), Jackie (oranges and Sprite),
and Sarah (diet Pepsi). Plus I added
Swedish Fish and Skittles. We ended up
having two separate mobile cheer/pit stops with kits that I made up. Daryl was at the Grand Floridian, Studios,
and finish area; and Jodie and Kevin were at Animal Kingdom and Studios. Although I didn’t know where they would be
when we started, we were able to get good locations from them by texting back
and forth and caught them every time. We
enjoyed a soda/walk break just past the halfway point, and grabbed goodies from
them every time we saw them.
I was so grateful to have them out there, because they all
spent a huge chunk of time traveling and waiting just to see us for a minute or
two at a time. Once I realized that, my
pity party stopped. As it turns out, I
didn’t even mind making up my own survival kits. I’m pretty type A, and this way I got exactly
what I wanted! It was also nice having a
random snack bag of leftover Swedish Fish to snack on Sunday night.
Signs of Awesomeness
Right around mile 11, we passed a sign I hadn’t been
expecting, which was made by my boss and hung up by one of the workers on that
stretch of road. I was on the right side
of the road when I noticed it hanging on the fence over on the left. I screamed (it was more like a squeal) “I
HAVE A SIGN!!!” and took off running straight across the road. I had tunnel vision…hopefully I didn’t run
over anyone or trip anyone up! I took a
selfie, and Sarah took a picture from a respectable distance, and then we took
off running again.
Side note: I heard
later from someone working that day that there must have been a bunch of other
Jamie’s, because he saw at least a dozen people stop and take pictures with my
sign. I love that!
There were lots of folks out with posters, both funny and
motivational, but I only remember the ones that I took pictures of – “Do it for
the Dole Whips” and “Someday you will fail. Today is not that day.” (yep, got
choked up by that one!) The last poster
to choke me up was right before mile 26, at the turn to enter the backstage
area:
That’s Carlie, who had run her first half marathon the day
before, plus Mark and Reid. After I took
this picture, I took a selfie with her and warned her not to touch me because I
was so sweaty. She said she didn’t care
and gave me a big hug. *tear* (almost) I
didn’t expect to see her out there at all, and only found out about 10 minutes
before that she was there. It was a
great way to finish running through my fourth theme park!
Seeing “My People”
Who Were Working
One fun thing for me about running Disney races is that I
see a lot of old friends and co-workers out on the course. I saw a bunch of Security folks I know, and
even a few familiar law enforcement faces.
I saw Roy from security, and circled back to hug him (early, before I
was really sweaty). He asked “what are you doing?” and I replied
“I’M RUNNING A MARATHON,” right in his ear.
I still owe him an apology for the temporary deafness I caused!
Scott waited backstage at Animal Kingdom – near stinky
port-a-potties no less – to say hello. I
saw Matthew working a medical tent around mile 15. Dan was at a post right where we entered
Studios. I think the last person working
that I saw was Sharmain, right at the exit of Studios. I know that none of these folks were out
there for me but it’s so nice to have
an extra person cheering, or smiling for a picture, or telling me I’m doing
great (or in Matthew’s case, telling me to speed it up so I don’t get swept).
One-Liners and LOL
Moments
Oh man, I wish I could remember more of these. There were so many times I laughed so hard I
could barely run. If I get more from
Sarah or Jackie, I’ll be sure to add them.
Scenario: Jamie chokes on a sip of water at the mile 6 water
stop, proceeds to spit the contents of her mouth back in the cup and have a
coughing fit. Sarah says “are you
choking? Do you need a throat punch?”
Jackie almost dies laughing, Jamie recovers enough to drink the
remainder of her backwash cocktail.
Scenario: Jackie chokes on a Skittle, Sarah again offers a
throat punch.
Scenario: Jamie looks around the interior of the WDW
Speedway and says “it’s bigger in here than I thought it would be. Heh…that’s what she said.” Jamie and Sarah both at the same time correct
the statement to “no, that’s what HE said.”
The man running right in front of us turned around and must’ve made a
face. I said sorry, and Sarah said “no
we’re not!”
While I was shaking the first pebble out of my shoe, a guy
dressed like Goofy asked to take a picture with Sarah, who was also dressed
like Goofy. Later on, Jackie and I saw
the Goofy guy in line for a character photo and she yelled “hey Goofy!” and
tried to high-five him. She was totally
ignored, so I high-fived her.
Scenario: Sarah attempts to hitch-hike headed towards the
Contemporary from the TTC.
Scenario: Ten miles later, Jackie and Sarah try the same
thing on Osceola Parkway. Jackie at
least got a bus driver to honk at her, which I rewarded by mooning him. It’s ok – the sparkle skirt is sheer anyway
and I had pants underneath it!
Everest
Early on in my race planning, I decided that I wanted to be
one of those people who stops mid-race to ride Expedition Everest. Jackie had never done it before, and I
figured that this might be my one chance EVER to ride a roller coaster during a
race so I should take advantage of it.
We ended up waiting about ten minutes just to ride, but I’m so glad we
did it. Not only was it a fun break from
the running, but it was a photo op, and a chance to scream and yell for a
minute. I rode next to a man dressed
like Winnie the Pooh, and his Piglet was in the seat right ahead of him. They were nice, and we had a great time. Amazingly enough, I was able to get in and
out of the car with no trouble, and wasn’t dizzy at all when we started running
again.
For really fit
people, climbing the real Everest might be on their bucket lists. For me, finishing a marathon was on my bucket
list. It was fitting to add a little
Everest to my big day!
Hallucination?
While running just past the Mexico pavilion in Epcot, at
mile 25.5ish, I saw a Disney tour guide walking with a man and woman. Although I intended to nudge Jackie and point
them out, instead I yelled “HI JOHN STAMOS!”
He turned so fast in my direction he might’ve gotten whiplash, but
recovered quickly and smiled. He yelled
back (not nearly as loudly), “hi everyone! You’re doing great!” Thank God he did, because if he had ignored
me I would’ve assumed that he was the most random hallucination ever! As it was, Jackie and I were both sort of
head-scratching and asking if it had really just happened. Mr. Stamos, by the way, is much better
looking in person than I would’ve expected.
Wow, what a smile!
Best Day of My Life
I have to say that 35 has been quite the milestone year for
me. What started out as “halfway to 70”
became the age I finally got my bachelor’s, started my master’s, got a new job,
ran my 8th-13th half marathons, and completed my first
full marathon.
If you had told me that I’d laugh so much, or that I’d cry
actual happy tears, during the marathon I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me that I’d feel
overwhelmingly loved by my friends that day, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had told me that I’d be genuinely
smiling in photos all day long, I wouldn’t have believed you. But I did. And right now, if you tell me that I will ever
have a day better than January 11, 2015, I won’t believe you.
The day wasn’t all unicorns and rainbows. I got really tired on the path from Studios
to Epcot, and couldn’t keep up with Jackie.
She was only 5 feet ahead of me, but I felt completely abandoned… for
all of a minute or two. After that, when
I started to fall behind, she would reach back and grab my hand and pull me
back up to her side. I thought I was
having a major blister crisis when we were going through the World Showcase,
and stopped running almost completely because I thought it was way worse than
it ended up being. I was hot, and tired,
and deliriously exhausted by the time it was over. And although I might have resented playing
“mommy” for all of us in advance of the race, I’m glad I did because Jackie
totally took over that role for me at the end.
She crossed the finish line right at my side, waited to get her own
medal until after she took a picture of me getting mine, and collected enough
water, bananas, etc. for both of us. She
selflessly let the day be all about me, even though she took just as many steps
as I did after running the half marathon
the day before! I can’t imagine ever
doing that for someone else, but I’m going to have to find a way to pay it
forward someday.
I also can’t say enough about the half of the race that
Sarah spent with us. The three of us had
so much fun in those 3+ hours. We
laughed, I cried, we took pictures…
I know that I could’ve finished the race if I had been out
there by myself. I probably would’ve
done it way faster, because I wouldn’t have “wasted” all that energy laughing
and carrying on. But, although we never
talked about any sort of strategy in advance, we decided to make the day be
more about the journey than the destination.
It was an experience more wonderful than I ever thought in my wildest
dreams would be possible.
Jackie and I crossed the finish line about 30 seconds before
the “balloon ladies,” which was a little bit embarrassing for me. I didn’t realize we had done that badly. But when you consider we probably lost a
total of 15 minutes for Everest, and I stopped and talked to every person I
know, we definitely could have finished in under 7 hours. I actually think 6:45 wouldn’t have been
unrealistic if we had taken it more seriously.
In the end though, I wouldn’t change anything about the way we handled
the day. When I run my next marathon
(yep, “when,” not “if”), I’ll be able to knock a huge chunk of time off and
have a massive PR. That seems
reasonable, right? So here are my
official results, posted only as a frame of reference for next time, because as
far as I’m concerned “FINISHED” is the only result that matters!
Clock Time: 8:06:29
Chip Time: 7:16:17
Pace: 16:38 min/mile
Overall Place: 19164/19970
Gender Place: 9739/10285
Chip Time: 7:16:17
Pace: 16:38 min/mile
Overall Place: 19164/19970
Gender Place: 9739/10285
So thank you, Disney, for giving me the opportunity to run
through all four theme parks in one day.
Thank you friends who cheered for me on the course. Thank you Facebook friends who didn’t mute me
during my “marathon mania” posting period, and for liking and commenting on so
many of my posts and photos. Thank you
Sarah for training with me and for sticking with us for as long as you did on
race day. And thank you Jackie for
literally holding my hand when I needed it most, staying with me for the whole
damn 7 hours, and putting yourself aside to focus on me.
By the way, the tally of “times Jamie got choked up” ended
at 21. After that I kind of lost count,
and I consider everything after the finish line one big cry. I’ve gotten choked up a few times since,
triggered by a song on the radio or driving by part of the marathon course and
having flashbacks, and I figure I might have a few more of those still to
come. I did cry some big fat tears again
typing these last few paragraphs (which I bet no one but my mother and I will
ever read this far), and I think after this I’m probably done with the tears
related to this race. It was an amazing
journey, but it’s time to start looking forward to the next set of challenges
and experiences.
After all, I turn 36 in a few weeks – I have to figure out
how I’m going to make that awesome too!
