After the knee injury that I wound up with during the training cycle that was supposed to lead me to the Chicago marathon, I questioned if there would even be a 2020 Dopey Challenge for me. But here we are, 39 days out from the race as I write this, and I have just finished number one of three “Dopey Simulations” that I will complete as I prepare for the race - so I’m officially allowing myself to be hopeful, and letting you all know, I am currently training to run the Dopey Challenge.
If you are new to my blog, or have never heard of the Dopey Challenge, you may think that I’m more crazy than Dopey as I announce this intent - The Dopey Challenge is a RunDisney event, that takes place during their marathon weekend Orlando, Florida, each January. It consists of four days of races, Thursday through Sunday, starting with a 5k on Thursday, then a 10k on Friday, a half marathon on Saturday, and ending with a full marathon on Sunday, for a total of 48.6 miles. Sounds like a lot, I know - but it is more about the fun than the finish times! This will be my second time taking on the Dopey challenge, as I previously completed it in 2017.
When I did the race in 2017, the half marathon was cancelled as a result of a thunderstorm. Since there was no official race, my friend Greg and I ran 13.1 miles around the Saratoga Springs resort so that we would still complete our full mileage, and feel like we earned our Dopey medals. Even though I am proud of that accomplishment, I am really hoping to get to run all four races as RunDisney intends this time around!
Now, the training - where am I at today?
After injuring my knee in August ( I posted about it here), I had to defer my 2019 entry to the Chicago Marathon, and had some of my lowest mileage months in a long time. Since then most of my training has taken a “do what you can” approach, because I would rather be under-trained and make it to the start line, instead of not even making it to that point because I pushed too hard.
My weeks have alternated between “higher” and lower mileage, the higher end being around 30 miles. I have also been on top of my cross training, heading to the gym three times a week with my brother and getting in swims and bike rides regularly.
This weekend I was able to complete my first Dopey simulation of this cycle - my friend Mike and I teamed up as accountability buddies, to ensure that we would both stay on top of our training, despite the holiday weekend.
I only had a three day work week, so Monday felt a little less dreadful than usual. I recently moved, and Monday was the first work morning at our new place. I wanted to get out for a run to start the week off with good intentions, and as my husband headed out to work, I headed out to get a few easy miles in. When my sister-in-laws lived in New York we used to run together in this area all of the time, but it was nice to have a route that broke my usual routine. I ran just over two miles in some brisk weather, and was glad that I got moving for at least a little.
Usually I head to the gym with my brother Tommy on Mondays, but since he had friends visiting from out of town for thanksgiving, we put strength training on hold for the week, and instead I focused on cleaning out our old apartment after work. We had been gradually moving our stuff, and Den and I were both over moving boxes, and looking forward to being completely moved out.
Tuesday morning Dad and Kasey were planning on heading out for a Run/Bike ride in the morning, and Dad encouraged me to meet up with them even though driving to my parent’s house meant getting up even earlier than usual. Lucky for me, their house is on Den’s way to work, so he dropped me off on his way, and I got my run in with Dad and Kasey. As usual, Kasey ran three miles, and then Dad and I kept going without her. I was planning to run back home, but Dad offered to drive me back, so I finished my run (a total of 6 miles) and then he gave me a ride home. I wound up a little crunched for time, but made it to work on time at least. That night I considered heading to a yoga class, but ultimately just wound up unpacking some boxes - seriously, does this moving stuff ever end?
Mike and I were planning on doing a dopey simulation with four days of runs from Thursday to Sunday, but when I checked the weekend forecast on Tuesday, I saw that there was snow in the forecast for Sunday - less than ideal for a three hour run. So we discussed the plan, and decided that it was a better idea to run the simulation Wednesday to Saturday. The one glitch was that I had already run two days in row, and felt like it would be risky for my knee if I ran 6 days in a row. So, I decided to swap the 5k that I was meant to run on Wednesday for 35 minutes of laps in the pool. It would be lower impact, but still get my heart rate up.
After work on Wednesday I headed up to the aquatic center, and eased into the pool. I was glad that I had my Xtrainerz, which are waterproof headphones, which enabled me to listed to a chapter of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix as I swam. It was an easy workout, since I just swam laps, and it felt good to stretch out in the water.
Thursday was Thanksgiving, and I upheld what is now a four-year tradition, running the Garden City Turkey Trot with my cousins. I was the extra embarassing older cousin this year, as I decided to run the race in a Turkey onesie ( I already posted a race recap HERE if you’re interested in hearing more about the race).
The rest of the day was spent with my extended family. First my husband Dennis and I headed to his Aunt’s house and had dinner with his family, and they we went and had dessert with my family. It was a long day, but I was thankful to get to spend it with family.
So, come Friday things were getting serious with the Dopey simulation. Mike and I were planning to meet up to run 10 miles, and Dennis and I needed to finish cleaning out the apartment, as we needed to be completely out before 12/1. So when I woke up I had breakfast, then headed to the apartment to work on getting the last of our stuff packed up. When 11:00 rolled around I drove over to Mike’s house, and Den kept working on the apartment.
It was a windy day, and Mike and I had our work cut out for us. We were running locally near his house, which meant loops to the library and even a stop at my parent’s house for water. I got to Mike’s house and dropped my gels and water bottle outside his front door, and we headed out for a 10 mile run. I started the run bundled up, but my jacket only lasted for the first few miles before we had to loop back to the house so I could ditch it. Mike and I chatted and the miles slipped away, paying no attention to our pace as we went - our goal for the Dopey Challenge is just to finish, not to have an eye on the time. We ran to the local library and looped through lots of block, stopping for pit stops to fuel and have some water twice, once at Mike’s house, and once at my parent’s house. We chatted with Dad for a few minutes before we got back on the road. Ten miles flew by, and even though we weren’t worried about the pace, we came in right around a 10 minute mile. We had both felt good during the run, and hoped that our non-conservative pace wouldn’t come back to bite us in the butt on Saturday’s run, which would be even longer - the goal was for 3 hours, or 16 miles, whichever came first.
I hadn’t run that far since I injured by knee in August, and I was a little worried about the increase in mileage. That was part of the reason that we attached a time limit to the run, so I wouldn’t feel like a failure if I couldn’t manage a particular distance. With a time goal, it took some of the pressure off of the run. I was meeting up with Mike again to get our miles in together, since we will be running together in January. Neither of us had plans for the day, so we opted to sleep in again and get on the road around 11:30. This time Mike drove to my new residence, and we headed out from there. I figured a three hour run would allow me to get re-acquainted with all of the streets in the neighborhood, so that I would be more comfortable navigating them on future runs.
The first loop lasted about four miles, and we made a quick water and fuel stop. The fuel of the day was Huma gels and Honey stinger gummies, paired with water for me and nuun endurance for Mike. We kept the break short, just long enough to take in gels, and then got on the road again. This time we headed for a route that would take us up an overpass, similar to the ones that we are likely to encounter on a rundisney course. We charged our uphill, and then caught our breath as we trotted across the bridge at an easier pace. Our second loop totaled closer to 6 miles, and we took a few walk breaks during it, feeling the miles from the day before. My knee felt okay, but my brain isn’t quite caught up to my body’s recovery, so I tend to be overly cautious at any discomfort, even if it is just my body responding two a second day of high mileage. After the second set of loops we were both starting to feel fatigued, so our pace slowed a bit. We stopped to re-fuel, streched it out a little, and planned two more shorter loops to get us through our final miles. My watch died around mile 11, but Mike had his still running, so I told him he would have to send me the run on strava after - because if your long run isn’t on strava, did it even happen?
We kept chatting, and decided burgers would be a necessity after this long run. By mile 14 I started to feel like it was the run that would never end, but after one final pit stop for some water and Honey Stinger gummies, we headed out for two more miles. Only two miles! Then it would be burger time - there was much discussion about what kind of burgers would be consumed. As much as the run had felt like it would never end, the end did come, and what a relief it was. It felt good to have completed a mileage that seemed daunting, and after a quick wardrobe change, we went and got our burgers….. and then took a ride to our local running store for small business Saturday! Mike only had one pair of running shoes in rotation and needed to grab a second, so that he would have an alternate pair during Dopey if it rained or something happened to his shoes.
All in all, it felt like a productive week of training, and after successfully running 26 miles in one weekend, I felt like a “real” runner again, after struggling with my “runner” identity through my knee injury. I am really hoping that after so much mileage everything feels good, and I am making sure to take good care of it and recover properly.
In the coming weeks I will be sharing more posts about training for the dopey challenge, so if you have any questions about the dopey challenge or rundisney, drop them in the comments below!