I was looking yesterday and realized I hadn't posted any update since my Portland marathon re-cap. That was in OCTOBER! November and December kind of flew by in a blur and I didn't even really do a whole lot. I tried to train for my 4th Dopey Challenge and hit a few bumps and snags. My Plantar Fasciitis came back and slowed my training to a crawl. My longest run before Disney was 14 miles and my back to back runs were almost all complete failures. The first run would go great and then I would bonk about 8 miles into the second run.
Anyway, even though my training was less than ideal, I went to Florida and ran my 4th Dopey Challenge and the Gods were smiling on me because as luck would have it, severe thunderstorms threatened the half marathon causing Disney to cancel it. That gave me an entire day to rest between the 5K-10K and the full marathon. So, I didn't technically complete the entire Dopey Challenge, but it didn't really matter to me because I DID finish the marathon and I wasn't sure that would happen if I had done the half the day before.
As usual, I had a lot of fun running all those magical miles. Unfortunately, this year I didn't make it to Animal Kingdom early enough to jump on Everest mid-race, but I had noticed last year that the end of the marathon wraps around the World Showcase in Epcot and the last country you go through is Mexico. Lots of people were finishing with margaritas in their hands and I thought what a brilliant idea. It's not like I'm fast and I'm looking to break any records. I just want to finish feeling good about it and smiling. So........this year as I approached the finish and was about half a mile out run-walking through the world showcase, I stopped with a little cash in my pocket and bought myself the strongest most magical margarita ever! Cheers Disney!
Damn, it was really good, but also really strong. I had to sip it.
As you can see, I succeeded. Had fun - check. Finished feeling pretty good - check. And smiling - check.
As soon as I got home from Disney I caught the plague that has been going around and have been ridiculously sick. I have been resting and sleeping A LOT. I am hoping that maybe after this weekend, if I rest a little bit more and let my body fight this horrible cold I will be better and ready to start training for the next event. I NEED to start training. Only about 2 weeks until the stair climb and only 44 days until my next marathon. With an already shortened training schedule and missing two weeks of it, Little Rock could be a bit of a challenge, but I'm up for it.
In the meantime, I have been getting better at pottery and I did glass blowing again over the holidays. I'm looking for some more non-running things to keep me busy, but I've been completely useless with this cold and not doing much of anything. Hoping that I can start filling my jar of awesome for 2017 and checking some things off my list again soon. The grand total for 2016 was 52 things including some pretty awesome things - Try blacksmithing, attend opening day at Fenway, Ride in a glider, Go to Iceland, Fly a helicopter, go white water rafting, eat a Voodoo donut.
Can't wait to see what awesome things I do in 2017!
