At the Walt Disney World Marathon, Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge calls on us to run both the half marathon on Saturday and the full marathon on Sunday. If we finish both of these races, we are rewarded with a special medal. I took on this challenge last year, the first time it was offered. I finished the half marathon okay but was swept in the middle of the full marathon for being too slow.
So I signed up to give it another try this year. We took a room at Pop Century because Fort Wilderness was filled up by the time I placed our reservation. We were comfortable there, Maggie liked it, so I guess we'll use that one again. We arrived Thursday afternoon in time to pick up my packet and spent Friday resting and sleeping until the Deads dinner in the evening.
I was not in the best possible shape for this undertaking. My left knee was giving me trouble. It would hurt whenever I moved it to the extremes of its range of motion. Linda, our massage therapist and all around alternative health guru, said it was jammed just as if it had been in an accident. She recommended that I rub on the knee a special blend of essential oils with anti-inflammatory properties, which she called Flameout, and rub over that some coconut oil which she said is also anti-inflammatory and helps carry the oils under the
skin. This helped considerably, reducing the twinges I had to endure and taking down the swelling in the knee.
However, I was still unable to straighten the knee fully. (Eric, our podiatrist/chiropractor, said that is caused by internal swelling in the joint.) On the way to the half marathon start, I encountered a fellow who said he was a racewalk judge. I straightened my knee as much as I could and asked him to look at it and give an opinion. He said it would be considered a bent knee and would not be acceptable.
At the Expo I heard an interesting talk by Danny Dreyer and purchased a copy of his book "Chi Walking." This is a walking technique that is supposed to incorporate elements of tai chi. Much of it is what I am already accustomed to doing except for two things he recommends:
keeping the knee bent and landing flat on the foot instead of on the heel. I followed these techniques throughout the event and had no problem with my knee except for a few twinges right at the starts. Makes me wonder whether normal racewalking technique, landing on my heel with a straight knee, might have been the cause of my problem. Be that as it may, it would make no sense for me to enter any judged racewalk events while my knee is in this condition.
I was also concerned about being swept again for being too slow. The rules state that the seven hour allowed time begins after the last person crosses the start line. Therefore, I made a special effort to move up in the starting pack as far as I legally could to give me the most margin. For the half marathon, this was easy. There were three starting waves labeled A, B and C. I was assigned to the C wave. While in the staging area, I moved as close as I could to the exit from which everybody would walk to the starting line. When the crowd started walking I stepped to the outside of the path and passed everybody, ending up right at the front of the C wave start.
The half marathon went smoothly if not rapidly. I finished in a chip
time of 3:29:04, making me 4th out of 5 in M75-79. After I
collected my half-marathon medal I went back to Pop Century where I met Maggie for lunch. Afterwards we walked around a fair amount which did seem to loosen up my legs.
The next morning I was up again at 2 a.m. to get ready for the full marathon. I got over to the staging area and settled down near the exit to wait for the walkout to the start. I was assigned to the next to last of five corrals, so my possibilities for moving up were limited. Nevertheless, I started off as soon as the walk to the corrals began and got right in the front of my assigned corral, as close to the corner as I could get comfortably. When the barriers between corrals were taken down, I moved up as far as I could along the gap between the fence and the road.
As I got started, I was very conscious of the possibility of being swept. Therefore, as I passed each sweeping point, I would ask the officials what my margin was. It was 15 minutes at mile 9 and had narrowed to 10 minutes at mile 13. By the time I reached the last sweeping point at mile 21, it was down to 2 minutes.
Because of the high temperatures, upper 70's or low 80's, race management advised us to drink Powerade instead of water after four hours. However, they failed to implement that good advice, because the water stations were out of Powerade after mile 18 or so. (That was certainly not up to Disney's usual standard, because race management had plenty of notice that the weather was going to be
warm.) Water didn't give me the same benefit. (Might it be a good idea next year to wear my own water carrier, filled with a drink of my choice?)
By the time I got to mile 23, I was dead last, falling way behind the pack. A guy on a bike told me that if I didn't pick it up, I would be hauled in. Fortunately, I happened to notice an opened, almost-full bottle of Powerade sitting on a fence post, and drank it up. That gave me enough energy to pass about half-a-dozen people before the finish.
I finished too late to be in the official records, my personal time being 7:14:21. I was a bit shaky when my chip was being removed, so they hauled me into the medical. By the time I convinced them that I was OK, thanked the beautiful Asian woman doctor who took care of me and got out of there, the finish line had closed and I had to dash from one official to another to get my marathon and Goofy medals, but I did get them.
For dinner we drove to the Golden Corral, one of my favorite restaurants. It's an all-you-can-eat place with a delicious variety of foods, and I have a tendency to pig out when I go there, so I tend to save it for occasions when serious replenishment is indicated. I figure I burned up 6347 calories in the 39.3 miles of the two races, so I considered myself entitled to a pigout. (A nurse friend told me that a good estimate of calories burned per mile is 85% of your body weight in pounds; plugging in my weight of 190 gives this result.)
Monday morning we checked out of Pop Century, breakfasted in the food court and set out to tour the parks. First we went to MGM Studios because I had always wanted to try out the Tower of Terror. (Maggie chickened out of this one.) I was very impressed with the care, detail and craftsmanship with which this replica of a hotel was built. I found it would make me feel more secure in the drops if I could hang onto something with my hands. There was nothing around to hold onto, so I hung onto my seat belt with both hands.
Leaving our van parked at MGM Studios, we took the boat to Epcot and enjoyed the new Soarin' ride and the manatees in the Seas exhibit. We had dinner in the Morocco pavilion. After the fireworks we got the boat back to MGM Studios, picked up our van and headed home, arriving early enough Tuesday afternoon to pick up our mail.
Now that I have sent in my registration for next year's Goofy, it's all over but the bragging and the showing off!
Charles Cohn
