It was runDisney registration day today for the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend in January 2021. Remember this, the most awesomest present:

I’ve been changing my mind about which adventure to pick ever since Kath gave me this. Together we ruled out Dopey – too much standing around for the 5k and 10k, too much holiday time taken up with sleeping, queuing or running – but I really didn’t know whether I wanted to run the half, the full or both (Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge). I kept changing my mind, thinking ‘just’ the half would be lovely, a challenge but nothing that dominates the trip, another 26.2 would be another chance to nail that distance and put London gremlins to bed and doing both would be one of those un-possible things I like to do every now and again. Registering for Goofy would make sense – I wouldn’t have to run both after all and if I didn’t, I would have simply paid for the privilege of choosing not to run (and of course we all know that in the end I would, obviously, have run them both).

So while listening to my staff meeting run past the 3pm finish time set for it, I loaded the website, hit register now as soon as it became available and watched the little dots go round and round in circles (You can’t see them on the photo but they were there).

My staff meeting finished and Kath had also finished and joined the registration queue on the iPad. The iPad got there first, Kath logged in and we completed all the details for the Goofy for us both. We were settled and agreed and all was fine. She hit pay and we got a notification that Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge had sold out. While that was happening I had got into the registration site on my laptop, we looked to upgrade to Dopey but could see that was already sold out. The half marathon was showing as still available so we input all the details for that and hit ‘pay’…. sold out. We looked at each other. I think we both knew that this meant our 26.2 journey was set to continue and we tried completing the registration forms as quickly as possible. And this time, when we hit ‘pay’, it worked.

So, I am never doing a marathon again, except I am. In January. Of course we are presuming here that it will be safe to travel etc. For now we will just hope that that’s the case and if it isn’t, well then it’s not. Registering was ridiculously stressful and initially it sort of floored me and I sat for a while not knowing whether to be disappointed or excited. We knew that the races often sell out and that individual races often go on the first day but when we registered for the 2019 Dopey, places for both Goofy and Dopey were available for a long time after registration opened so we weren’t quite expecting not to get a Goofy spot. When we didn’t we were a bit taken aback. Eventually disappointment wore off and now the excitement as well as the ridiculousness of having registered for another marathon is setting in.

So now the planning starts properly. I’ve been looking at plans on and off focusing on the half mostly as I was going to leave the final decision about distance until later in the year until I had a few decent length runs in me. So I’ll need to have a bit of a re-think and shift in mindset. I’ll use the runDisney training plan with one or two little modifications I think. I can get my head round that and it feels safe and familiar (and I tried different for London and, well, let’s just say that maybe I don’t like different). I won’t go the full 26 before race day like the plan suggests, I never have, and I’ll add some speed and hill to the mid-week runs. I can do this. I’ve done it before. That doesn’t stop me from being terrified though.