Dopey Challenge--Pluto's 5K (The actual first event.)

A 5k? 3.1 miles? In the two months leading up to the start of Dopey, my shortest run was a taper run of 3 miles. Prior to that taper run, I hadn't done a run as short as three miles since mid-November. Everything was longer. So it wasn't the distance that was intimidating. It was about shaking off the first-morning jitters, getting a feeling for the lay of the land at 3:00 in the morning, and trying to figure out just how cold the start would be.

Disney requires that all runners be on the buses no later than 4:00 for a 5:30 start time. The temperature on the morning of the 5k was 26 degrees. And the high for the day was to be about 40 degrees. And the race was going to be done before sunrise, so I didn't expect to run in temperatures above 30.

I'd done a ton of reading ahead of time, and people warned me that standing in the corrals would be the worst part, so I wore layers. Lots of layers. My mom tried to capture my look before I walked out the door:


But frankly, this was four layers short. I had a long-sleeved Skirt Sports top  with a t-shirt from my high school over the top of it. And I had a skirt sports skirt + leggings on the bottom I was really hoping that I'd be able to represent Culver at the races, but my survival skills got the better of me. I was going to be warm at the start line no matter what.

Before I headed out the door, I added a light jacket (for wind resistance), a hoodie sweatshirt (that I planned to throw away at the start of the race), a $2.50 fleece blanket from Walmart, and I stuffed a trash bag in my pocket to add if I needed it. On the bottom, I added a pair of the ugliest $1.96 pair of fleece Christmas pants I could find on the Walmart clearance rack.

And let me say right now, I was effing cold. I have run in temperatures here in Indiana where people have called me crazy. I have run in temperatures so low that people haven't been able to start their cars. But let me tell you, it's one thing to dress for the temperatures in your house, run out the door and do your run, and come home to warm up. It's another to get dressed in a hotel room and then go stand in a corral for an hour and a half before running. I was a popsicle by the time the 5k race started.

I was still smiling when I got on the bus with my extra layers....

And now for today's tip: If you have a trash bag in your pocket at the start of a race, use it. For some reason, I got off the bus, and I felt just fine, so I decided to set my trash bag down on a table so someone else could take it if they wanted to. An hour and a half later, I was certainly regretting that decision. The wind was eating me alive. And I was cold.

We're all in this together, folks. (This year's mantra, it seems...) Look at all those hats! We were all cold. The start line of the Pluto 5K was all lit up. And we got fireworks. Little ones. 

I'm not sure how many waves there were, but I was in corral C. And they sent us off in waves with a minute apart. I crossed the start line somewhere in the 5:40 range. I chatted with a woman who had run a number of Disney races in the corral before the race, and we ended up doing the whole 5k together. And I never took my sweatshirt off. It was THAT cold.

I teared up when we entered Epcot. It was so beautiful. All the buildings around World Showcase were lit up beautifully, and they were playing music through the speakers, and Disney has a great sound system, so the tunes were just amazing. 

My feet never did warm up. But it was a good first-race jitters kind of a race. I also didn't try to stop for character stops anywhere along the way. Those are pretty popular on the 5K, but it just wasn't my thing. I did stop to take this quick shot with Dory outside of the Finding Nemo ride. "Just keep running. Just keep running." 

I finally got back to the room at 7:30 or so, and my mom snapped this picture. Me in my throwaway top (I'd wear it again the next day for the 10k). And my first of three medals. 

When people have asked me this week which race was the hardest, this is actually the one that comes to mind. It wasn't hardest because of the distance. But it was hardest because of the nerves, the cold, the unfamiliar logistics... And frankly, when I got back to the room and was thinking about prepping for the 10k, I was most concerned about the cold. I wasn't sure how I could handle the cold again the next day. 

(Spoiler: I managed the cold better each day, and the weather got four or five degrees warmer each morning.)

Here's the 5K map: