Wow. Just wow. One more week complete, one week of school left, Christmas vacation, and a Disney trip around the corner! But who’s counting? All that is on my mind lately is Disney World and this Dopey Challenge. When you invest almost a whole year into preparing for something, why wouldn’t it be? Sure, at the start of the year after registration for this race it was always in the back of my mind…but I had so many other sweet races to be preparing for and heading off to that it didn’t consume my every thought. My husband made a wise ass comment, as seen below, on my Facebook page last week….and he is spot on:

This last week brought a lot of excitement for those in the RunDisney community heading down for WDW Marathon weekend—-corral placements were released! And colored course maps! And more stuff with be released daily, you can bet! Corral placements are a stressor for many people doing RunDisney and I was anxious to see where I would be placed. I was in Corral A during Wine & Dine half marathon, with my submitted time of 1:46:32, and for the Dopey Challenge I was able to submit a faster time of 1:41:07 from my Bare Bones Half. This earned me a spot in Corral B for the Dopey Challenge weekend. Below are the bib ranges for those of us doing the Dopey, and you can see how small some of the corrals are with just Dopey runners.

Now each corral also has people doing the Goofy Challenge (half and full) and the half marathon or full marathon, dependent on the race day. A guy in one of my Dopey challenge Facebook groups made a document combining all the participants for each big race (half and full) to outline how many people are actually in each corral. And there’s tons of other diehards who have analyzed the corral breakdowns. In short, I am very happy with my placement, and I assume my corral will be starting at 5:32 am, two minutes after the official start of elites and corral A. This will allow me to fully enjoy the half marathon and stop at EVERY photo stop with little to no wait and ball my eyes out as I run down Main Street in the Magic Kingdom. I am also still planning on giving it all I got on the day of the full, so I won’t have to worry about weaving between people and wasting time and energy at the start. I will be talking more about my “game plan” as I get closer 🙂

On a different note, last week also brought on a 48 hour flu. Sunday and Monday night I slept like total crap???and when I woke up Monday my whole body ached. My gut instinct was to contribute this to my running 5-7-13-18 indoors on the track all weekend. But when I got home after work Monday I could tell it was not that. Woke up with a full body sweat and had to call in sick to work Tuesday. I took it easy Tuesday, did not run Wednesday, and changed this weeks mileage a tad. I am completing another Thursday-Sunday “Mock Dopey” but did 2.5-5-10 and will finish with 20 today. The weather is warmer (well above freezing) but we are having stupid Lethbridge winds today which will make it interesting. My husband keeps calling me crazy, but I am going to head out anyway to do this 20 by about 1:00 pm.

Lastly, my fundraising is still going well, and I have confidence I can break $1500 for both the American Heart Association and the Heart & Stroke Foundation before my completion of the Dopey Challenge. I am currently at $1471 for American Heart Association and $1155 for Heart & Stroke Foundation (Canada). The reason I embarked on this craziness was to raise awareness of heart disease and how it can effect any of us, no matter how fit we are! My dad is cheering me on, and I know his presence will be felt my whole trip to Disney World—he’s going to be helping push me through! If you are able to, please help me reach my goal! Every little bit counts!