#KeelsDoesDopey: The Background
If you follow along on these boards, you'll know that before I'd even run my first rD race I had become quickly enamored with all the races. In fact, I hadn't even run my first race (the
Disneyland 5k) before I'd been convinced that the Dopey Challenge would be what I needed to kick off my 2016 year of running.
I'd recently completed my FIRST EVER half marathon, after only "running" since the beginning of December 2014. The sense of accomplishment pushed me to such a high, and took my training in a completely different direction. I knew I could do Dopey back then - even before I'd experienced a race weekend of such a huge magnitude as that of a rD weekend - but I needed a push in the right direction.
I may have sent a late-night email to my Dad mentioning that I was thinking about running Dopey and maybe they could gift that to me as my birthday or Christmas present (let's be honest - the first ridiculous step in the Dopey Challenge is paying the outrageous entry fee).
The next morning, I woke to the go-ahead for Dopey - a registration confirmation.
And the rest is history.
I'm not really going to bore you with specific training recaps, because honestly? The last 19 pages have been that. Also, what I learned during MY Dopey journey is that it was just that. It was MY journey. It was MY training program. MY successes. MY failures. Just me, putting in the miles.
I've posted my training schedule I made up and followed a couple of times, so I won't repost that - and mostly for the reasons I mentioned above. What I did worked for me.
So - here's the nuts and bolts:
- Going in to Dopey I had been running for exactly one year and one month.
- I had completed eight 5Ks, six 10Ks and 6-ish half marathons.
- For PoT for Dopey, I had to submit a time of a half marathon distance or higher. Due to injury and weather, my best time (by the PoT submission deadline) was a 3:01 half marathon time. With the Dopey Curve (it's a real thing), my estimated finish at PoT deadline for the marathon was 6:22.
- We left for Florida on December 22, and stayed with my parents for Christmas and the time leading up to and including Dopey. Because it was the holidays, and my parents are such great people, we had a revolving door of guests coming to enjoy the beautiful Florida weather.
- I had no time goals, other than finishing and not getting swept. Also, not getting hurt was a big thing. Running on a reconstructed foot attached to an underdeveloped leg was already a hurdle I had to deal with. But, I have to deal with that every day. I promised my parents and my husband that if I felt ANYTHING ... and I mean anything, in my little foot (my reconstructed clubfoot) or the accompanying ankle, that I would stop immediately, wait for a "Parade Bus" and give up the Dopey Challenge. There aren't many people who have had the fusions and surgeries I've had in my little foot - and there certainly was no case study in what would happen if one of those fusions were to pop, split, break or even just slightly fracture. I also had two elongated Z-shaped slices put in my Achilles' Tendon during my last surgery to help lengthen the tendon to match with the final length of my leg (I was given a heel made of cadaver on my left foot in that surgery as my growth plates had closed and it was the final step in giving me a "normal" foot), so that was another MAJOR concern. If Vegas was taking odds, I'm very certain that even money going into Dopey was my left Achilles' rupturing.
And all of that takes us to ...
The Expo