Walt Disney World Half Marathon - RunHalf Marathon

Part one of the Goofy Challenge. I knew going into this it was going to be a tough weekend. I completed IM AZ in November, then took three weeks completely off to recover from that. As a result my training and running over December was dismal at best. In hindsight signing up for the Goofy Challenge so soon after an Ironman was a bad idea, but I might as well make the best of it. I went back and forth in my mind leading up to this half on whether or not I wanted to just run the half for a decent time and suffer on the marathon as a result, or take it easy on the half and hopefully not suffer on the marathon. I think I finally made the decision around mile 5 to just bring my pace back to around 9:30-9:40/mile and enjoy this race. I started to get some pain in my knee around mile 11 which worried me a bit, I was able to catch the last medical station and put some biofreeze on it which helped at the time.

Train properly for the weekend and either not take so much time off after Arizona or not schedule this kind of race so close to another.

Walking from finish line back to buses.


Under-trained and the unusual FL heat and humidity. Two weeks prior to this race I was doing another half in -2F temps!


This is a great, fun race and I'd not hesitate to do it again. That being said it's not a "race" as much as an event, I wouldn't come here looking for a PR. I was really looking forward to a post-race massage since I was running the marathon the next day, I was a little disappointed that they were charging $ for the massage tent. Crowd and volunteer support is excellent and I felt that Disney does a great job accommodating the huge race field. It's not a cheap race, but once you see how much logistics goes into it I can understand the entry fee.