Disney’s Marathon Weekend 5K

On 1÷8÷15 my family and I ran the Disney Marathon Weekend 5K as a family fun run. It was advertised as a family run.
Way back in March I pitched the idea of the run to my family. Running is great and I want to instill the values of exercise to my daughters at an early age. Everyone was feeling very positive about an early morning run and the fact that we get a trip to Disney World certainly helped.
Well thanks to the weather, early start time and expected arrival time, and the abuse my wife gave me for three days afterward I have to give THIS years run only one star.
To start, I knew the race started at 6:15am which is 5:15 Chicago time. Very early but doable. At packet pick up we learned that we had to catch a bus by 5am at the latest to be in the start corral on time. Too early. Really too early for a family fun run. And to make it worse, the luck of the draw put us in one of the last starting corrals so we didn’t even begin our run until almost 7am.
Buses drop you off super far from the staging area. It’s like you have to walk a 10K to get to the start of the 5K.
Thanks to a polar vortex or some other weather phenomenon the temperature at start time was 38 degrees. We froze our butts off. The sun had not yet come up and everyone was freezing.
People dressed as Tinker Bell. Freezing. Even the Anna and Elsa’s from Frozen were freezing.
The kids handled this way better than my wife. Picture one of those photos you see on National Geographic. The Arctic explorer is standing on an ice flow being chased by a leopard seal. It’s 120 degrees below zero. There are icicles hanging from his beard and eye brows. The only thing that keeps him out of the jaws of the predator is the desire to live. Now picture my wife running only to get to the bus at the finish line to get out of the cold and back to bed.
Three days later when she started talking to me again she made a good point. This is Disney! Disney is so big that they should have installed heaters throughout the family fun run course so the runners could stay warm. (or maybe just warming tents)
So next year, Disney please set the start time to a reasonable hour, wife says 11ish, arrange for warmer weather or install heaters, and have the buses drop us off right at our starting corral five minutes before start time. LOL

This is a short and sweet course; it’s the bread before the salad (10k) before the appetizer (half) before the main course (full). The analogy is just okay.
The first mile is through the wilderness (read: roads). It’s pretty boring.
The second mile goes through the lighted worlds of Epcot.
The third mile traces around the space ball in the future world of Epcot.
The end.
It’s a quickie, a relief for the jet-​lagged and bleary eyed. I made the mistake of arriving too early for my shuttle at 3:50am (we were warned to get to the shuttle by 4:00am to make our corrals) and waited in the cold until 6:30am. I was not amused. After the run there was a huge cluster of people unsure of what to do as we all did not want to miss signing in to check off our Dopey requirements. There should have been somebody directing on the first day, especially because this is the first year of the Dopey, but it’s cool we all figured it out for the rest of the weekend.

The 5k was labeled as a fun run and it sure was fun! The organization was superb from the expo through race day! I ran it as part of the Dopey’s Challenge. The race now falls on Thursday.
The start and finish lines are located at the Epcot parking lot. When you first get there, you can go to the finish line area and check your gear bag if you have stuff to check. They encourage you not to check anything unless you absolutely need to since there will be security check for all bags. Then you can head to the starting corrals. They then release the corrals one at a time starting with corral A. The course itself was pretty much a loop of the parking lot and a loop around Epcot. It was a fun course. Nice and fast!

I went big for my first 5K. I wanted it to be something I would remember for a long time & I most certainly will. Waking up super early on a vacation day was not an exciting thought. But having run around EPCOT — literally — before half my co-​workers were at work was worth it. And the other half? They were stuck in NJ dealing with snow. I LOVE FLORIDA!
The weekend was one to remember & I don’t think anything can ever top Disney’s style. I’m already training for the Animal Kingdom’s Expedition to Everest obstacle 5K in May. Can’t wait!