Goofy's Challenge Race Report

Over the weekend, as you guys know, we went down to Walt Disney World to run Goofy's Challenge (half-marathon on Saturday, full-marathon on Sunday, for those of you not familiar). This was Miss Bethany's 6th time doing Goofy's Challenge (and therefore considered "Perfectly Goofy," because this is only the 6th time of Disney offering the 'Goofy's Challenge'), and it was my first Goofy's Challenge. I've done the half-marathon 3 times: 2007, 2008, 2009, and last year I just did the full-marathon. This year I decided to step it up and do Goofy's Challenge.

Half-Marathon:

We ran the half separately, and Miss Bethany just cruised along to a 1:50:40, easy beans for her. I went into the weekend very concerned about my IT band. It had been bothering me off and on since Stonecat, and I did a lot of my long runs on trails to kind of baby it, so I was a little nervous about how it would respond to 40 miles of road this weekend. I have a wonderful friend/massage therapist who has been helping me to fix my IT band issues, and I've been rolling/stretching/doing all the right things for it, but I was still nervous. I started the half very conservatively, at a slow and easy pace. As the miles went by, I felt better and better, no pain at all in the IT, so I picked up the pace a little. (Come to find out it was a little too much, as I was sore the next day for the full.) But long story short, I felt great after the half, and finished in 2:00:15, with no pain at all. What a great feeling, I was confident going into Sunday's full.

Full-Marathon:

We ran the full marathon together and, of course, had a blast. We started out nice and easy, around 9:40 pace, and I felt good . . . until I hit the dreaded wall, AT MILE 2. My legs just felt tired and sore, and it felt like they were asking me, 'You idiot, why did you run 13.1 miles yesterday, and why are you running 26.2 today?' So we took the pace down a bit, and Miss Bethany led me through the rest of the way. We ended up finishing in 4:32:29. I'm pretty happy with that, considering it was my first Goofy, and how sore I was already at mile 2. Also, it was great ultra training to run 20+ miles on sore legs :). We had an absolute blast. There was tons of crowd support, lots of characters along the way. Lots of music, bands, cheerleaders, etc. Just 26.2 miles of fun. We loved it. This is our favorite marathon, and we'll definitely be back next year. We're even thinking of trying to squeeze in a fall trip here for the Wine and Dine 1/2 Marathon. 

Here are some pics from the trip:

With Daisy after the 1/2 Marathon

Clarabelle Cow after the 1/2 Marathon

With our friends Lindsey and Cindy after the 1/2 Marathon

After the Full Marathon. Also, after Miss Bethany hand-fed me four muffins. Can you tell I felt like I got hit by a truck?

I felt much better after I got my Goofy hat and a beer.

Happily displaying our Goofy medals. Miss Bethany's lanyard was orange because she is Perfectly Goofy.

Celebrating at Epcot

Celebrating with a Radeberger Pilsner in Epcot Germany.

With Mickey at Epcot (notice our matching shirts, we wore matching shirts four days in a row, we're cool like that)

With Pluto at Epcot

Finally, with Goofy at Epcot, celebrating our successful completion of Goofy's Challenge