Walt Disney World Marathon : Official Thread

So to put a real message out here, we are officially 16 weeks away from race day so everybody should be on week 1 of their training plans.  Good luck to all, stay healthy.  Making it to the starting line is 99% of the battle!

I learned last year after doing a Marathon in March, IMFL 70.3 in May and IMLP in July that just staying consistent and not OVER doing mileage is what helped.  The farthest I ran in between the Marathon and Ironman was 16 miles.  Not being a coach, that is my reccomendation.  Take a week off, then go back to more of a maintenance program than anything.  I probably would not go over 13-15 miles on any run and even at that I would only do that 1 time.  After doing Philly you certainly will have the "distance" in you legs, the goal is to not be too fatigued.

My $.02...

There will be a lot of runners out there with cameras.  Once I took a nice lightweight disposable camera and that worked out well.  There are a lot of picture opportunities during the race.  It's the only time you can actually take pictures with Disney characters without standing in line.  Of course you'd have to be running just for fun in order to do such things.

In the past they have sent us an email address and a confirmation page for proof of time, but I don't remember seeing one yet, not that I have looked much.  It's not a big deal to show up at packet pickup and get your corral changed.  There is a bunch of booths off to the right, after you pick up your bib.  They may be labeled "Race Information" or "Race Problems" or something like that.  Just show up with your printout or whatever and request a different corral.  I've even shown the results off my cell phone web browser to change corrals.  Pretty easy.  I believe results that show sub 3:45 ability can get you in corral A.

Re: multiple marathons, Hal Higdon has guides for maintenance between the marathons:

Multiple Marathoning

I do several marathons every spring and fall and I generally follow this kind of plan.

I am signed up for my first Goofy as well, 5th Disney overall.  I will be coming off 3 fall marathons, and the JFK 50, so it'll be an interesting December trying to recover and train at the same time.

I have not been training based on Goofy, this is just for fun.  I will probably run the first day slow enough to be able to hang with family in the parks the rest of the day, and then head out on Sunday like a normal marathon day and see what happens.

It's going to be a lot of fun, Disney is a real treat.

You don't need a full marathon for proof, you can use another race as long as it is a 10k or longer.  Sub 4 probably gets you corral B which is substantially different than the last corral.  If you don't have any races in your history, just go out and do one between now and then as part of your training.

Bring your 15k results otherwise.  The people at the booth might accept your 8:54 pace for corral B from what I've seen.

I bet your half in the 70.3 would be good too if the run portion was fast enough.

Ah that sounds neat. 

Yeah 3 shirts is a bit much.  And 3 medals!  We'll be weighed down as we walk the parks on Sunday. :-)

As crazy as it sounds, there will be lots of Goofy runners walking around the parks on Saturday and Sunday.  It's the whole reason I signed up for it, I felt left out. :-)  Will be interesting to see what a half marathon + park day + marathon + park day feels like.

Good to see that others have the same Goofy plan that I do.  Hope it works out.

Hmm.  That would be an issue wouldn't it. :-)  I'm not sure I have a tip for keeping your camera from getting wet except a baggie and then it's a pain to get it out all the time.

I have never seen Disney still available at this time of year.  It's at 92% now.  Way back when, I would see it fill in June.  The numbers have moved slowly lately, and it may actually get to race day without a sellout, but if you are serious about it, I wouldn't play games with it because that's how things sell out on us.

Being able to do the marathon isn't really an issue, it's just how well, and how much suffering.  Injuries could also occur without enough training but you can outsmart injuries if you play it smart on race day.