To Infinity and Beyond - Becoming a Better DopeyBadger (Comments Welcome)

[DopeyBadger]

Tuesday, January 9th – Disney Springs and Flight home

We woke up at 7am. Steph got the DME notice outside the door and we were to board at noon for our 4pm flight. Not a ton of time since Disney Springs didn’t open until 10am, but enough time to do some damage. Starbucks opened at 9am, so the goal was to hit that first, then Lego, then World of Disney, then Sprinkles cupcakes. We packed everything up and called Bell Services to pick up the bags. We were at the bus stop at 8:45.

OKW is pretty close to DS so the trip was quick.



We made it to Starbucks at 9:20am. I had a caramel covered doughnut. It was delish. We burned some time and then the Lego store was open. We scheduled 20 min at Lego, 20 min at World of Disney, and 20 min to walk to Sprinkles and the bus stop. The goal was be on the bus back no later than 11:15am. Timing worked out great. G got to race a self-made car at Lego.






Viewed the Legos inside and purchased a Lego Junior version of Elsa’s castle.







Then headed over to World of Disney and my mom found another coffee mug, Steph found a hat, and G bought some mini-figurines. We headed over to Sprinkles. They didn’t have any peanut butter cupcakes, but they did have a peanut butter chocolate pretzel cookie. So that’s what I got. It was ok, but not even close to as good as the cookie at MK.

We were on the bus back to OKW at 11:10am (right on schedule). Then we got back to the resort with a little time to spare so we ate lunch at the QS. It was ok, but again nothing special. Just kind of available.



G wanted to create a special goodbye to Disney. So, she picked up sticks and put it on the different leaves of the plant. Such an interesting kid…



The bus arrived on time and before long we were headed back to the airport. The trip was certainly winding down. While sitting on the bus, I noticed a woman across from me who looked awfully familiar. Red braided hair and tattoos. Talked a bit about running and diet to the other person seated next to her. I thought it might have been Erin J. from Strava. We’d been following each other for years, but never met in person. I looked at her profile, but I couldn’t be convinced it was indeed Erin. So, I decided not to say anything. I did make mention on Strava later in the day and she confirmed it was indeed her. Small world! I saw Strava friends Matt B, Jaime D. and Erin J all on the same trip. Crazy!

We arrived at the airport and I was dreading getting the luggage to the Frontier check-in. So, many bags. A guy with a cart came up and asked if we needed help. Sure, you want to help, I’ll accept your help. He guided us though the airport with all of our bags on the cart and made life soooo much easier. We made it to the desk without issue and it was so easy. Then, he told us he’d meet us once we got through the line at boarding pass check-in. His supervisor walked up and asked if we wanted to wait in this line or not wait in this line. I was like huh? He was like you could wait here, or I could help you and you wouldn’t have to wait? It made me really nervous because I had no idea who these people were. Finally, Steph and I said sure. You can help us. So, he took us out of line, asked for our IDs and then headed to the front of the line. He talked to the agent and got our bags checked and boarding passes. He came back within minutes and handed us our boarding passes. See, no line. I said, wait what about the IDs? Ooops! No worries they are in my pocket. So, weird. We tipped him and the other guy. The guy told us it was a new service at the airport and we just had to tip for good service. Works for me. Saved us a good chunk of time. We confirmed it online afterwards because we were a bit nervous.

We made our way to the security line and thankfully had TSA Pre-Check again. In and out in no time. In fact, if anything we were too quick. We made it to the gate at 1:30pm. We had nearly 3 hours to burn. Our flight did get delayed from 4:13 to 4:50pm. Ugh! Thankfully that was the only delay and everything worked out great from there. We were nervous as to whether our bags would be there in Madison, but there was no issue. Everything worked out! We made the short trip from the Madison airport to home and only reaffirmed that we love flying out of Madison with such a short car ride post-trip. And then, that was it. The trip was over seemingly before it even started.

Amount of sleep night prior – 8:50
Number of Steps – 8,589
Number of miles covered – 4.4 miles

Next Post: Summary

 

[DopeyBadger]

Summary

After the 2017 Dopey trip, I’m happy to report that this trip went much better. Everything went really smoothly. After the last trip, I had made some proposed planned changes to help make the trip better for the 2018 version.

Our current planned changes –
-No park time during the race days. I’m in “race mode” during these days and while I am enjoying the parks I have a mood about me that can annoy others. So, to remove this as an issue it would be better to do the parks after the races. For the race days (and time prior), we’ll just do the pool or visit hotels.
-Less planning of theme park visits. I like schedules. But I don’t usually handle change well. I don’t handle “missing” things on the checklist well either. So, when we make a detailed itinerary and fail to meet the expectations of the list, I tend to get in a mood. It’s not intentional, it just happens. So, to avoid this happening to me, we’ll just have no plans.
-Because of the timing of holidays and race weekend we expect crowds to be awful again. So, our theme park visiting will be done after the race weekend and we’ll extend our vacation into the next week. We’ll just do whatever we want whenever we want without a set schedule.
-One change for next year is that I absolutely must be on the starting line of the 5k/10k if I wish to nail a perfect to me race. My pace is faster than many of the other runners and to avoid having to pull back or risk falling it would be better to stay ahead of everyone.

We only did one theme park day on a race day (5k) and everything worked out fine. It was nice not to try and do MK on Saturday (our original plan) and instead on Monday after the marathon. The crowds were very manageable on Monday (MK) but not so much on Thursday (AK). So, the plan worked beautifully.

We eliminated the plans and just kind of jumped from one ride to the next at random. While it may not have been efficient, it was less stressful because I didn’t have any items to check off. Rather, I just enjoyed the moment more.

We extended the vacation an extra day into Monday/Tuesday post-marathon and that was a great decision. Magic Kingdom wasn’t that packed and we were able to accomplish almost every ride we wanted to. Outside of a handful of misses it was a great timed theme park day.

From a race weekend standpoint, it couldn’t have gone much better. The 5k was a bit slower than I had anticipated, but when you get a side stitch mid-5k there isn’t much time to recover. But if a bad race is going to happen, it’s best to happen in the 5k. Still a 24 second PR. The 10k was amazing. I truly felt I crushed that race and nailed a 40 second improvement on the 5k from the day prior, including a new 10k PR as well at 39:54. The feeling of excitement at the finish line is indescribable. The HM went very well as well. I didn’t know how I’d do based on the tightness of my hamstrings during the WU. But I let my body dictate the pace and it gave me a wonderful PR performance of 1:30:35. Lastly, the marathon. I was even more sore heading into that morning and even less confident of what I’d get from my body. I gave it my all and for a majority of the race felt as if the PR of 3:14 or less was attainable. But sadly, at Mile 26 it became apparent that something went wrong and I just missed the PR. Tears of all kinds were shed at the finish line. It was the end of 2018 Dopey, but it was also the end of the Perfect Dopey after 5 consecutive years. It just felt like the end of the end. I was able to snag a solid overall Dopey performance with a 5:46 cumulative time and 20th place finish overall. In addition, when only considering Perfect Dopeys I finished second in 2018. Other than first, it couldn’t get much better than that.

But this was also the culmination of a running journey. I’ve run the Dopey five times and I’ve continued to push the envelope each time. To look back on my Dopey progress is to look back on a snapshot of my entire running journey thus far.

Year – 5k time, 10k time, HM time, M time, Goofy Time, Dopey Time, Dopey Place
2014 – 23:36, 51:45, 2:11:56, 4:35:07, 6:47:03, 8:02:24, 914th
2015 – 23:52, 49:49, 1:59:04, 4:27:23, 6:26:27, 7:40:08, 672nd
2016 – 21:49, 44:57, 1:43:09, 3:55:35, 5:38:44, 6:45:30, 160th
2017 – 21:02, 43:25, cancelled, 3:20:52, xxx, xxx, 43rd
2018 – 20:06, 39:54, 1:30:35, 3:15:59, 4:46:34, 5:46:34, 20th

Comparing 2014 to 2018, we get the following % improvements:
5k – 3:30 minutes (15%)
10k – 11:51 minutes (23%)
HM – 41:21 minutes (32%)
M – 1:19:08 minutes (29%)
Dopey – 2:15:50 (28%)

Let that sink in. Over the course of 4 years I improved most of my times by 15-32% and took 2.25 hours off my Dopey time. I went from 914th place to 20th place. It’s been a fun journey!

The other thing to reflect on was the expectations coming into the training plan. My predictions on October 4th, right after my marathon and at the beginning of the training cycle, were: 19:05, 39:45, 1:27:31, 3:18:53, 4:46:24, and 5:45:13. So the 5k was off by about 60 seconds, 10k off by 9 seconds, HM off by 2.5 minutes, M off by 3 minutes, Goofy off by 10 seconds, and Dopey off by about 75 seconds. Not too shabby of a prediction before training even started. I came into the training plan with the following goals:

1) Sextuple PR Challenge. In my 4 previous Dopey runs (3 as non-first attempts), I have yet to accomplish the Sextuple PR Challenge. Since this may be the last try, I'm giving it everything I got. I'm looking for a lifetime PR at 5k, 10k, HM, M, Goofy, and Dopey all as non-first time attempts at these distances. Didn’t accomplish but came within a razor’s margin on the marathon.
2) 5k - Sub 19 minutes Side stitch stopped this one
3) 10k - Sub 40 minutes Nailed IT!
4) HM - Sub 1:30 Oh so close!
5) M - Sub 3:14 Just a hair off.
6) Dopey - Sub 5:45 Within a minute.
7) Finish in the Top 25 of the Dopey Challenge when evaluated by cumulative time Got 20th place
8) Finish in the Top 3 of the Dopey Challenge when evaluated by cumulative time for the Male 30-34 age division Haven’t heard yet, but I’m guessing it’s close.
9) Successfully meet as many DIS'ers pre/post/during races as possible Major success
10) Coach as many runners through the Marathon Weekend races as that'll honor me with that opportunity Major success
11) Cheer my mom though her first Dopey Challenge at age 61 Completed!
12) Beat the bib # (whatever that may be this year) Accomplished with 134 vs 20.
13) Most importantly - Beat the Rocket Scientist I decided to help out the Rocket Scientist instead.

Lastly, the weekend was a rousing success from a coaching standpoint. I had 27 runners with training plans over the weekend all of paces and experience levels. And without question, things went really well. Happy with my performance, but ecstatic about what the other runners were able to accomplish that weekend!

As we sat on the plane, Steph and I reflected on the trip. We had some new ideas for the next trip on what worked and what didn’t.

Things to do differently:
-Don’t take an expo bus from Boardwalk. Since BW is the 4th stop between the Boardwalk resorts it can get shafted for race day transportation. Given what happened at OKW/SS during the races, I can’t even imagine what BW was like on race day. No thanks! In the future, I’d probably take a Minnie Van to the expo at like 11:15am. Not because I’d want to be super early for merch or anything. But being early means you avoid the mess of lines that came later in the day. It was a nightmare expo experience and really was a time suck from the remainder of the day plans.

-Don’t eat lunch at Be Our Guest. We really felt burned by the mediocre food. We won’t eat there again for a bit of time.

-Don’t go to conservation station until Gigi gets older. She doesn’t really understand it and it was more or less a wasted time. It was fine with nothing else to do, but we could have done other things instead.

-Get Park Hoppers if minimal days. We felt as if with AK that we were inefficient and left some time on the table. We did that because we didn’t have many other things to do inside the park. It would have been a better use of our time to have Park Hoppers and make minimal time at some of the other parks as well.

-No parks during races at all. While AK was ok on Thursday, it would have been best to not do the parks at all. Not from a fatigue standpoint and not from a crowd standpoint (as 2019 should be better without Florida kids off from school), but just from a sanity standpoint. I think it would be more enjoyable for all to not have to rush around the parks on limited time frames.

-Stay two extra days after the races (so until Wednesday). This would give Monday/Tuesday as park days. Manageable with the other suggestions.

-With the extra days, we’d enable ourselves extra rest for G. We rushed around a lot and probably wore G out to the max. Maybe with less rushing she wouldn’t have gotten sick again and we wouldn’t have had lost time due to sickness.

Things to do the same:
-Minnie Van. It was very convenient for only $25 plus tip. If we are on a schedule with somewhere to be (like reservations to Bon Voyage) it can be a real-time saver just to take the Minnie Van. Same goes for expo day. We’ll be doing that again for sure.

-Bon Voyage. This has moved to the top of the list for must-dos. The food is fantastic. The characters are outstanding spending 1-2 minutes per table. It’s relatively quiet so you can actually hear the characters. And they’re people not costumes so better interaction. It’s a great character meal and Eugene has been amazing the two times G has gone.

-Yak and Yeti. While not an immediate “must” it ranks quite high on the list. In the world of Disney, it felt unique and was quite tasty. If things worked out right, we’d do it again.

-Monster’s Laugh Floor and Lion King show. Both solid attractions. If we were to do LK again, we’d probably not get the FP since G likes to sit up high and we really didn’t save ourselves any time of anything.

-Buying bulk water bottles from Garden Grocer. I’ll say this from the outset. I totally and utterly dislike the taste of the Florida water. I can’t do it. I’ve tried filtering it as well and to this WI guy it tastes really bad. I need bottled water instead. A case of 32 bottled water from Garden Grocer was $11 (or roughly 33 cents a bottle). The same Dasani water was $3 a bottle in the general store or in the parks. That’s not even comparable. I get 4 bottles of water in the parks or 32 bottles from delivery for roughly the same price. That’s 1/8th the cost. Save yourself some serious dough and buy bulk water. If you’re like me, you drink a ton of water during a race weekend to stay hydrated. As a group of 3 adults and 1 child over the course of 6.5 days (barely Tuesday flown in and barely Tuesday flying out) we drank 96 bottles of water. Approximately, 15 bottled waters per day. We bought 5 packages and only used three. So, we wasted $22 in water on extra bottles. But if we had missed ordered only 2 cases, then we would have spent almost $100 to make up for the misjudgment. So, being over by 64 waters was far less costly, then being under by 32 waters.

-Disney Springs on airport day. The timing worked out great at DS and felt leisurely. We’d do that again.

-Polite Pig at Disney Springs moves to a “must”. It was fantastic food and Steph didn’t even get to fully enjoy it. We will be back 100% because it was awesome!

-Try D-Luxe at Disney Springs. We wanted to try there and had that planned for post-marathon. But plans fell through. So, we want to give it a shot the next chance we get.

-Order smart water. G has a perfect puking streak and we need to be prepared for it. So, order the Smart Water in advance since it’s $4 a pop from Disney.

Let’s check out the step count!

Total Number of Steps while on vacation (Jan 2 – Jan 9 (8 days)) – 171,819
Total Number of Miles covered while on vacation (Jan 2 – Jan 9 (8 days)) – 105.1

Total Number of Steps before marathon (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 102.319
Total Number of Miles covered before marathon (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 61.1

Average Number of Steps before marathon per day (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 20,463
Average Number of Miles covered before marathon per day (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 12.2

Normal Number of Steps in a week during training – 133,000-145,000 (or 19,000 to 20,700 steps per day).

Outside of the marathon day, the week in Disney was a pretty typical steps and mileage week for me. Although most of my steps/miles in training are running whereas in Disney more of that was walking. Like I’ve said many times before, I manage to do PRs at Disney and fully enjoy the parks because they aren’t above and beyond what I do in training. If you build up your training tolerance, it’s possible to do both while on vacation.

And with that, it’s over. The end of an era. The Dopey Challenge has meant a lot to my running journey. Without it, I might not have ever given the marathon another chance. That first marathon in 2012 went so poorly for a lot of good reasons. I was one and done. But then the Dopey Challenge came around and things changed. My interest in marathons was reinvigorated. I owe a lot to Disney and the Dopey Challenge in helping me shape the runner I am today. So, thank you Disney and thank you Dopey for creating a challenge that helped get me to where I am now. It’s been a blast and I’m excited to start the next era.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the Trip Report, Race Recaps and my Coaching Recap!

2014 Dopey Challenge


2015 Dopey Challenge


2016 Dopey Challenge


2017 Dopey Challenge


2018 Dopey Challenge

 

[rteetz]

I think that sums up my feelings reading this. Simply amazing. There is no other way to put it.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I think that sums up my feelings reading this. Simply amazing. There is no other way to put it.

Thanks @rteetz! I'm in complete agreement with all of those emotions.

 

[TeeterTots]

Wow! Amazing! My heart was racing just reading along! You're incredible! So humble and kind and I'm pleased to be able to say your my coach!!! Thank you for the kind words and now I'm totally sobbing!!!!

 

[surfde22]

We had requested something close to the main bus stop but didn’t get our requested building. We were reasonably close though. Only a 6-minute walk from hotel room to main bus stop. There are definitely further away rooms then the one we ended up with.

Third floor and no elevator. Sounds like a great plan for a marathon racing weekend

I totally get the pain of third floor and no elevator. We had the same situation last year at OKW. Luckily you had a close room, we were at the far end of the resort. Like, literally the farthest away internal bus stop. Luckily my brother and I only had to make the walk one morning and were able to catch the internal bus the other mornings.

 

[DopeyBadger]

I totally get the pain of third floor and no elevator. We had the same situation last year at OKW. Luckily you had a close room, we were at the far end of the resort. Like, literally the farthest away internal bus stop. Luckily my brother and I only had to make the walk one morning and were able to catch the internal bus the other mornings.

Ouch! That would be bad for sure! Glad you were able to catch the internal bus most mornings though. I can't imagine adding that walk on to the beginning or end of the run.

 

[KSellers88]

Absolutely incredible, Billy! I am so sad I did not get to meet you and your adorable family. I hope G is feeling better now and cannot wait to see what 2018 has in store for you! Thanks again for everything!

 

[ANIM8R]

That was a fun read!

Congrats on your success! I realize you didn't get a couple of PRs you wanted but those are FANTASTIC times especially considering the daily activities you undertook during the race days. Great job!

 

[gjramsey]

Thanks for the awesome recap of the week. I am disappointed I didn't get a chance to talk to you one of the race mornings. I kept getting to the meeting spot just too late.

 

[Dis_Yoda]

Boardwalk on race day isn’t bad if you are on the first bus. They have their own dedicated bus then at the beginning.

That was me at the 10k but not at mile 25 during the Marathon. I was eating breakfast at that time. I did see you at the ttc during the marathon though!

I know my husband post race wished he followed the plan more. Irma and Irma clean up kinda took a toll on his running since his paths weren’t clear. Then he started a new job around Thanksgiving which threw a wrench into things.

Glad you had a great race weekend overall!

 

[MissLiss279]

Great recap! Really enjoyed reading it. Thanks again for the training plan, and can’t wait for the next one!

 

[DopeyBadger]

Absolutely incredible, Billy! I am so sad I did not get to meet you and your adorable family. I hope G is feeling better now and cannot wait to see what 2018 has in store for you! Thanks again for everything!

Thanks! Next time for sure! I'm excited for 2018 for both of us!

That was a fun read!

Congrats on your success! I realize you didn't get a couple of PRs you wanted but those are FANTASTIC times especially considering the daily activities you undertook during the race days. Great job!

Thanks! It was certainly an ambitious goal, and that's not lost on me. To come within 1:55 of my marathon PR with 61 miles on my legs is a very solid performance.

Thanks for the awesome recap of the week. I am disappointed I didn't get a chance to talk to you one of the race mornings. I kept getting to the meeting spot just too late.

Thanks! Hopefully we'll get to meet another time!

Boardwalk on race day isn’t bad if you are on the first bus. They have their own dedicated bus then at the beginning.

That's good to know. It's high on our list from a racing weekend standpoint. So good for race day, but maybe the expo is a bit rough.

That was me at the 10k but not at mile 25 during the Marathon.

Fun! I wasn't expecting to me people out that early for the 10k with a cooler so I figured it was probably you. Doppleganger for sure at the marathon, then!

I know my husband post race wished he followed the plan more. Irma and Irma clean up kinda took a toll on his running since his paths weren’t clear. Then he started a new job around Thanksgiving which threw a wrench into things.

Don't worry! Life happens! He made it through and he's got the next adventure to look forward to.

Glad you had a great race weekend overall!

Thanks!

Great recap! Really enjoyed reading it. Thanks again for the training plan, and can’t wait for the next one!

Thanks! I'm excited for you. Big things are on the horizon. At least one of us was able to hit the Sextuple PR Dopey Challenge!

 

[PCFriar80]

Great job!! Well planned, well executed and most importantly well written!! You have graduated to Dopey 2019!!
Best of luck in 2018!

 

[FFigawi]

Great recap. I hope G is fully recovered.

 

[DopeyBadger]

Great job!! Well planned, well executed and most importantly well written!!

Thanks!

You have graduated to Dopey 2019!!

Dopey is done for now for me. I'll be back someday, but after 5 consecutive years it's time for a break.

Great recap.

Thanks!

I hope G is fully recovered.

She is in good spirits and 100% now. Now it's my turn I guess as the last 24 hours have been rough.

 

[mrsg00fy]

Summary

After the 2017 Dopey trip, I’m happy to report that this trip went much better. Everything went really smoothly. After the last trip, I had made some proposed planned changes to help make the trip better for the 2018 version.

Our current planned changes –
-No park time during the race days. I’m in “race mode” during these days and while I am enjoying the parks I have a mood about me that can annoy others. So, to remove this as an issue it would be better to do the parks after the races. For the race days (and time prior), we’ll just do the pool or visit hotels.
-Less planning of theme park visits. I like schedules. But I don’t usually handle change well. I don’t handle “missing” things on the checklist well either. So, when we make a detailed itinerary and fail to meet the expectations of the list, I tend to get in a mood. It’s not intentional, it just happens. So, to avoid this happening to me, we’ll just have no plans.
-Because of the timing of holidays and race weekend we expect crowds to be awful again. So, our theme park visiting will be done after the race weekend and we’ll extend our vacation into the next week. We’ll just do whatever we want whenever we want without a set schedule.
-One change for next year is that I absolutely must be on the starting line of the 5k/10k if I wish to nail a perfect to me race. My pace is faster than many of the other runners and to avoid having to pull back or risk falling it would be better to stay ahead of everyone.

We only did one theme park day on a race day (5k) and everything worked out fine. It was nice not to try and do MK on Saturday (our original plan) and instead on Monday after the marathon. The crowds were very manageable on Monday (MK) but not so much on Thursday (AK). So, the plan worked beautifully.

We eliminated the plans and just kind of jumped from one ride to the next at random. While it may not have been efficient, it was less stressful because I didn’t have any items to check off. Rather, I just enjoyed the moment more.

We extended the vacation an extra day into Monday/Tuesday post-marathon and that was a great decision. Magic Kingdom wasn’t that packed and we were able to accomplish almost every ride we wanted to. Outside of a handful of misses it was a great timed theme park day.

From a race weekend standpoint, it couldn’t have gone much better. The 5k was a bit slower than I had anticipated, but when you get a side stitch mid-5k there isn’t much time to recover. But if a bad race is going to happen, it’s best to happen in the 5k. Still a 24 second PR. The 10k was amazing. I truly felt I crushed that race and nailed a 40 second improvement on the 5k from the day prior, including a new 10k PR as well at 39:54. The feeling of excitement at the finish line is indescribable. The HM went very well as well. I didn’t know how I’d do based on the tightness of my hamstrings during the WU. But I let my body dictate the pace and it gave me a wonderful PR performance of 1:30:35. Lastly, the marathon. I was even more sore heading into that morning and even less confident of what I’d get from my body. I gave it my all and for a majority of the race felt as if the PR of 3:14 or less was attainable. But sadly, at Mile 26 it became apparent that something went wrong and I just missed the PR. Tears of all kinds were shed at the finish line. It was the end of 2018 Dopey, but it was also the end of the Perfect Dopey after 5 consecutive years. It just felt like the end of the end. I was able to snag a solid overall Dopey performance with a 5:46 cumulative time and 20th place finish overall. In addition, when only considering Perfect Dopeys I finished second in 2018. Other than first, it couldn’t get much better than that.

But this was also the culmination of a running journey. I’ve run the Dopey five times and I’ve continued to push the envelope each time. To look back on my Dopey progress is to look back on a snapshot of my entire running journey thus far.

Year – 5k time, 10k time, HM time, M time, Goofy Time, Dopey Time, Dopey Place
2014 – 23:36, 51:45, 2:11:56, 4:35:07, 6:47:03, 8:02:24, 914th
2015 – 23:52, 49:49, 1:59:04, 4:27:23, 6:26:27, 7:40:08, 672nd
2016 – 21:49, 44:57, 1:43:09, 3:55:35, 5:38:44, 6:45:30, 160th
2017 – 21:02, 43:25, cancelled, 3:20:52, xxx, xxx, 43rd
2018 – 20:06, 39:54, 1:30:35, 3:15:59, 4:46:34, 5:46:34, 20th

Comparing 2014 to 2018, we get the following % improvements:
5k – 3:30 minutes (15%)
10k – 11:51 minutes (23%)
HM – 41:21 minutes (32%)
M – 1:19:08 minutes (29%)
Dopey – 2:15:50 (28%)

Let that sink in. Over the course of 4 years I improved most of my times by 15-32% and took 2.25 hours off my Dopey time. I went from 914th place to 20th place. It’s been a fun journey!

The other thing to reflect on was the expectations coming into the training plan. My predictions on October 4th, right after my marathon and at the beginning of the training cycle, were: 19:05, 39:45, 1:27:31, 3:18:53, 4:46:24, and 5:45:13. So the 5k was off by about 60 seconds, 10k off by 9 seconds, HM off by 2.5 minutes, M off by 3 minutes, Goofy off by 10 seconds, and Dopey off by about 75 seconds. Not too shabby of a prediction before training even started. I came into the training plan with the following goals:

1) Sextuple PR Challenge. In my 4 previous Dopey runs (3 as non-first attempts), I have yet to accomplish the Sextuple PR Challenge. Since this may be the last try, I'm giving it everything I got. I'm looking for a lifetime PR at 5k, 10k, HM, M, Goofy, and Dopey all as non-first time attempts at these distances. Didn’t accomplish but came within a razor’s margin on the marathon.
2) 5k - Sub 19 minutes Side stitch stopped this one
3) 10k - Sub 40 minutes Nailed IT!
4) HM - Sub 1:30 Oh so close!
5) M - Sub 3:14 Just a hair off.
6) Dopey - Sub 5:45 Within a minute.
7) Finish in the Top 25 of the Dopey Challenge when evaluated by cumulative time Got 20th place
8) Finish in the Top 3 of the Dopey Challenge when evaluated by cumulative time for the Male 30-34 age division Haven’t heard yet, but I’m guessing it’s close.
9) Successfully meet as many DIS'ers pre/post/during races as possible Major success
10) Coach as many runners through the Marathon Weekend races as that'll honor me with that opportunity Major success
11) Cheer my mom though her first Dopey Challenge at age 61 Completed!
12) Beat the bib # (whatever that may be this year) Accomplished with 134 vs 20.
13) Most importantly - Beat the Rocket Scientist I decided to help out the Rocket Scientist instead.

Lastly, the weekend was a rousing success from a coaching standpoint. I had 27 runners with training plans over the weekend all of paces and experience levels. And without question, things went really well. Happy with my performance, but ecstatic about what the other runners were able to accomplish that weekend!

As we sat on the plane, Steph and I reflected on the trip. We had some new ideas for the next trip on what worked and what didn’t.

Things to do differently:
-Don’t take an expo bus from Boardwalk. Since BW is the 4th stop between the Boardwalk resorts it can get shafted for race day transportation. Given what happened at OKW/SS during the races, I can’t even imagine what BW was like on race day. No thanks! In the future, I’d probably take a Minnie Van to the expo at like 11:15am. Not because I’d want to be super early for merch or anything. But being early means you avoid the mess of lines that came later in the day. It was a nightmare expo experience and really was a time suck from the remainder of the day plans.

-Don’t eat lunch at Be Our Guest. We really felt burned by the mediocre food. We won’t eat there again for a bit of time.

-Don’t go to conservation station until Gigi gets older. She doesn’t really understand it and it was more or less a wasted time. It was fine with nothing else to do, but we could have done other things instead.

-Get Park Hoppers if minimal days. We felt as if with AK that we were inefficient and left some time on the table. We did that because we didn’t have many other things to do inside the park. It would have been a better use of our time to have Park Hoppers and make minimal time at some of the other parks as well.

-No parks during races at all. While AK was ok on Thursday, it would have been best to not do the parks at all. Not from a fatigue standpoint and not from a crowd standpoint (as 2019 should be better without Florida kids off from school), but just from a sanity standpoint. I think it would be more enjoyable for all to not have to rush around the parks on limited time frames.

-Stay two extra days after the races (so until Wednesday). This would give Monday/Tuesday as park days. Manageable with the other suggestions.

-With the extra days, we’d enable ourselves extra rest for G. We rushed around a lot and probably wore G out to the max. Maybe with less rushing she wouldn’t have gotten sick again and we wouldn’t have had lost time due to sickness.

Things to do the same:
-Minnie Van. It was very convenient for only $25 plus tip. If we are on a schedule with somewhere to be (like reservations to Bon Voyage) it can be a real-time saver just to take the Minnie Van. Same goes for expo day. We’ll be doing that again for sure.

-Bon Voyage. This has moved to the top of the list for must-dos. The food is fantastic. The characters are outstanding spending 1-2 minutes per table. It’s relatively quiet so you can actually hear the characters. And they’re people not costumes so better interaction. It’s a great character meal and Eugene has been amazing the two times G has gone.

-Yak and Yeti. While not an immediate “must” it ranks quite high on the list. In the world of Disney, it felt unique and was quite tasty. If things worked out right, we’d do it again.

-Monster’s Laugh Floor and Lion King show. Both solid attractions. If we were to do LK again, we’d probably not get the FP since G likes to sit up high and we really didn’t save ourselves any time of anything.

-Buying bulk water bottles from Garden Grocer. I’ll say this from the outset. I totally and utterly dislike the taste of the Florida water. I can’t do it. I’ve tried filtering it as well and to this WI guy it tastes really bad. I need bottled water instead. A case of 32 bottled water from Garden Grocer was $11 (or roughly 33 cents a bottle). The same Dasani water was $3 a bottle in the general store or in the parks. That’s not even comparable. I get 4 bottles of water in the parks or 32 bottles from delivery for roughly the same price. That’s 1/8th the cost. Save yourself some serious dough and buy bulk water. If you’re like me, you drink a ton of water during a race weekend to stay hydrated. As a group of 3 adults and 1 child over the course of 6.5 days (barely Tuesday flown in and barely Tuesday flying out) we drank 96 bottles of water. Approximately, 15 bottled waters per day. We bought 5 packages and only used three. So, we wasted $22 in water on extra bottles. But if we had missed ordered only 2 cases, then we would have spent almost $100 to make up for the misjudgment. So, being over by 64 waters was far less costly, then being under by 32 waters.

-Disney Springs on airport day. The timing worked out great at DS and felt leisurely. We’d do that again.

-Polite Pig at Disney Springs moves to a “must”. It was fantastic food and Steph didn’t even get to fully enjoy it. We will be back 100% because it was awesome!

-Try D-Luxe at Disney Springs. We wanted to try there and had that planned for post-marathon. But plans fell through. So, we want to give it a shot the next chance we get.

-Order smart water. G has a perfect puking streak and we need to be prepared for it. So, order the Smart Water in advance since it’s $4 a pop from Disney.

Let’s check out the step count!

Total Number of Steps while on vacation (Jan 2 – Jan 9 (8 days)) – 171,819
Total Number of Miles covered while on vacation (Jan 2 – Jan 9 (8 days)) – 105.1

Total Number of Steps before marathon (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 102.319
Total Number of Miles covered before marathon (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 61.1

Average Number of Steps before marathon per day (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 20,463
Average Number of Miles covered before marathon per day (Jan 2 – Jan 6 (5 days)) – 12.2

Normal Number of Steps in a week during training – 133,000-145,000 (or 19,000 to 20,700 steps per day).

Outside of the marathon day, the week in Disney was a pretty typical steps and mileage week for me. Although most of my steps/miles in training are running whereas in Disney more of that was walking. Like I’ve said many times before, I manage to do PRs at Disney and fully enjoy the parks because they aren’t above and beyond what I do in training. If you build up your training tolerance, it’s possible to do both while on vacation.

And with that, it’s over. The end of an era. The Dopey Challenge has meant a lot to my running journey. Without it, I might not have ever given the marathon another chance. That first marathon in 2012 went so poorly for a lot of good reasons. I was one and done. But then the Dopey Challenge came around and things changed. My interest in marathons was reinvigorated. I owe a lot to Disney and the Dopey Challenge in helping me shape the runner I am today. So, thank you Disney and thank you Dopey for creating a challenge that helped get me to where I am now. It’s been a blast and I’m excited to start the next era.

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed the Trip Report, Race Recaps and my Coaching Recap!

2014 Dopey Challenge
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2015 Dopey Challenge
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2016 Dopey Challenge
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2017 Dopey Challenge
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2018 Dopey Challenge
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Congrats again. Just wiped off a tear or two. I am so happy for you and your journey and grateful for the joy you bring to others. Thank you for everything Billy and best wishes for all that the future holds.

 

[ZellyB]

Congratulations, Billy! An amazing write-up about a fantastic performance.

 

[lhermiston]

You’re an inspiration, Billy, and I loved reading this (especially the stream of consciousness marathon recap). I hope you had an amazing weekend and that G is over her illness. Thank you for the coaching you provide to me and others.

I know Dopey is out for 2019, but I’m still hoping you make it down for marathon weekend next year. I’ll buy ya a chocolate milk.

 

[baxter24]

Once again, awesome job! Really enjoyed reading your recaps and meeting you the mornings before the races!