Thanks Ariel - BTW, I see your frequent posts and you always seem to have great comments.
Thank you!
That's so nice of you to say. And yes, I do post frequently...
LOL
Basically, I am trying to spread them out as much as possible so that I keep the new challenges coming. When I finish the Dopey, in a couple years, I don't know what I will target. (Although I have started swimming too so I guess Triathalons are always an option)
Good way to think about it...now that I have done Goofy once I feel like I won't be satisfied doing one race on Marathon Weekend in the future...
I definitely think we will see a shift, either in number or in pricing, but that it will be small. I think I pointed this out before, but officially registering for the Dopey cost no more than signing up for the individual races, but you get the extra shirt and medal. So I can see them bumping that up by $20 (the same way the Goofy costs $20 more than the half and full).
Yeah I see what you mean. You're absolutely right that they'll bump up the price starting next year, assuming it comes back after this year. I'm surprised they didn't do that this year...but maybe they wanted to ease people into the sticker shock by starting the price out under $500.
But I also don't see them decreasing the number of Dopey slots by many. By shifting the 5k to Thursday! and even by scheduling the 10k for Friday, they are almost saying that they don't want any people to do just those races, but rather are looking for family of Marathoners, or people who are trying to do multiple race in a short time period. Can you think of that many locals that would try to sign up for a Friday AM 10k, and then go to work? Or waste a vacation day on a 10k? So there may be some shift, but I wouldn't be terribly surprised if they view the 10k almost as a race for the Dopey runners, with a few thousand non Dopeys. Especially after looking at the numbers they allocated for the Dumbo.
...that is really interesting. I totally didn't think about that, but you make a great point. One of my first reactions upon seeing the new schedule was that the 5K wasn't going to be possible for a lot of people, especially those coming from out of town (my husband, for example, won't ever be able to do the 5K due to his work schedule)...but maybe Disney doesn't care about that so much because once they raise the price of Dopey like you say above that is where they will actually start making more of a profit.
I definitely agree that they shouldn't be increasing the 5k. I reserve final judgement until after I see if the seeding this year works better, but 8k is a lot of runners for that course to handle.
Yes, especially when 1/3-1/2 of the course is in Epcot. Those narrow pathways just can't handle tons of runners.
Totally shifting tracks, I think the 10k will end up being an almost hybrid of the other existing courses. Starting at the 5k start point, following that to the end of the dirt road, where the 5k turns right to go through the guard shack, but everyone goes left for the half/full. If the runners go left, and then follow some of the old red start, then come in where the full does by the bus stops, go on stage, then head down to world showcase, the counter clockwise loop around the world showcase, then similar to every other finish. I did a rough point to point sketch, and got 6 mi, so making it a smidge more accurate might end up with the 6.2. Mashing a bit of all the races together. But it lets them stay within Epcot, and has minimal effect on external traffic.
It's got to be something like that...I think I read somewhere that the course is in Epcot. I'm curious to see it!
its baffles me to see all the post on run disney fb and the event page set up by run disney today that most of all of the first time marthoners .. are doing the goofy.. , i said it a few days ago to shannon , and ill say it again.. --- why do you ant to kill your self..
I think it's partially what @
runningforit said above, that it's easy to get swept up in the excitement (especially since the Dopey Challenge is what runDisney is advertising the most on their Facebook/runDisney webpage right now), the fact that it's an inaugural year, and - I don't know how it's possible - but people may just think that it won't "be that hard" since they are Disney races. And I feel like the newer runners don't have an idea of how hard it really will be to train for (example - the person I referenced earlier that signed up for Dopey having never run more than 3 miles at a time).
Having unofficially done Dopey last year (5K, half and full), the training really was the hardest part for me. Going through a base-building period after the 2012 marathon up until the fall, then running 4 days per week/strength training 2 days per week for 18 weeks (along with, you know, life - family, work, etc.) was tough (especially during winter in Ohio...yowza). But I was pretty unprepared for how tiring the weekend itself actually would be and how little it felt like a "vacation" - and that was with 3 races, not 4. I'm not trying to sound like a know-it-all or an OMG JEALZ H8R
but I think some of these folks are in for a wake-up call. I hope they successfully make it through healthy and happy, but yeah...I don't think everyone's being very smart about it.
