Hello and welcome to my Dopey Challenge 2025 trip report! Today I’m recapping the crown jewel of the Dopey experience: The WDW Marathon. Read all the entries in this report here. Onward! You know what I love? I’ll tell you what I love: the WDW Marathon. It is my One Race to Rule Them All. I haven’t skipped a...
Continue reading
I set out with a unique goal as I approached the 2024 Marine Corps Marathon: my aim was to run the slowest non-runDisney marathon I’d ever clocked. Huh? Why would anyone want to do that? Isn’t the whole point of races trying to improve upon your time? Well, yes, but then again, no. In light of my lingering knee...
Continue reading
I’m not gonna lie to you guys – I’m feeling a bit nervous about the Marine Corps Marathon. WHY THIS MIGHT BE MY FIRST DNF Hey, remember that knee trouble I reported back in frickin’ APRIL? I never managed to quite get rid of it. I think it’s patellar tendinitis. It’s been waxing and waning, and I wasn’t able...
Continue reading
A few weeks ago, I posed a question – did my racing reach exceed my running grasp? Could I race two PRs in as many weekends? The answers, we come to find out, are: 1. Yes. 2. No. Drat. THE BEST LAID RACE PLANS Run Oak Island Half? A comedy of errors. As for the Wilmington Marathon? More generalized...
Continue reading
I’m gonna make like NASA and term my 2023 Wilmington Marathon a successful failure. Did I get exactly what I wanted out of it? No! Did I still come away with some valuable takeaways, a triumph of technicality, and, y’know, survive the ordeal? Yes, yes, and yes! And so it is in a fit of positivity that we dive...
Continue reading
A couple months ago I was chatting with my parents about my running plans, and mentioned that I was kinda cooling on the full marathon.* I think the entire running community now knows exactly where this post is going. * Excepting the WDW Marathon, which is where joy lives. Hold, please; you’re right, but there’s more to it than...
Continue reading
It’s my favorite annual trip report – my WDW Marathon trip! See all the posts in this trip report here. Onward! So anyway, what I did was, the night before the WDW Marathon I had a panic attack. Haha! Or at least I think it was a panic attack. I honest to God COULD NOT SLEEP. My heart was...
Continue reading
Holy smokes, kids; this is NOT NOT NOT the pre-trip WDW post I expected to write. I almost had to skip it entirely and IT. WAS. TERRIFYING. What happened, you ask? A sudden injury? A death? A work obligation? No! It was that most mundane emergency of the present decade: COVID exposure. Over the last week, I have tested...
Continue reading
People generally seem impressed when I mention (not that often, I swear) that I’ve run/am running a marathon. For some reason, my kneejerk reaction is to try to downplay it and hype it up all at once. “Oh, it’s really not that hard,” I say. “Anyone can do it,” I say. “It’s a mental game,” I say. “You could...
Continue reading
Time for another trip report! I’ll be covering my 2022 WDW Marathon Weekend trip. Find all the posts in this report here. Onward! 2021 was the Year With No Walt Disney World Marathon. My heart: broken. My will to live: gone. My serotonin levels: bottoming out. Enter 2022. A young year, plagued by… the plague just as much as...
Continue reading