Dopey Challenge 2023, 5k

Given this year I decided that I was NOT going to be visiting the Disney parks, rather I'd be going into Universal's parks instead, I was staying off-property, less than two miles from Universal City Walk. So, for the first time ever, I didn't have the runDisney-provided transportation available to me. I was nervous about making sure I had the correct directions for getting to the Epcot parking lot, the traffic in the immediate vicinity (given the nightmare I've witnessed annually while sitting aboard the bus), and parking. So, to make sure I gave myself enough time to get ready before walking out the door and then to get to Epcot (in order to arrive for meet-ups and early arrival time into the corral to be up front), that meant waking up at 2am. TWO A.M. !!!! Ugh!

Mercifully, no issues waking up, having my brief breakfast (a banana and granola bar -- standard pre-race meal for me), going to the bathroom, getting dressed, and making sure I had my gear check bag. I got out the door about 2:40am, and got to Epcot painlessly by shortly after 3am. Nice! Given I had extra time, I set my alarm for about 15 minutes to try to catch a quick nap. FOOL! No, not because I missed the alarm, but because there was so much adrenaline already coursing through my veins that there was zero chance of my actually catching any sleep.

I made the long walk from my far parking spot to security and then the long gauntlet to the main runner's village area. Yet again, they changed up how they were doing gear check trucks. They no longer had bib number ranges nor letters (for last names) associated with them. Merely trucks #1-7 -- choose whichever one you want. Even though I had written my bib number on the bag as per normal, they also wrote a different number on the bag, likely associated with the position within the truck where they would find the bag later. OK, fine. Two numbers to provide them later. The number I had gotten was brainless for me to remember, since it was my birthday.

The biggest pre-race goal for me was to make sure I was in place to be part of the Perfect Dopey photo. Over the course of 20-30 minutes, slowly but surely, all the Perfect Dopeys slowly congregated near the stage, in a smaller area than was previously available for such milling about. While there were apparently 446 Perfect Dopeys, we had nowhere near that many making it there for the photo.

But, with that out of the way, I quickly made my way into the corral. People had already been flowing into the corrals, and I was concerned that I wouldn't be close to the front -- I didn't want to be stuck in any of the latter mini-waves, since I wanted to the be on the leading edge of getting to the photo stops. While not at the very front of Corral A, I got close enough so that I was in the first mini-wave.

Given the fact that I was part of a large group of people who were splitting the cost of Memory Maker, and I only bother taking photos of Mile Markers during the marathon, I chose not to bring my camera with me for any of the photo stops -- it would just be all PhotoPass. Turns out the very first photo stop didn't have a PhotoPass photographer, rather only a Cast Member (CM) for the characters. Luckily, I knew the person in line who arrived seconds before me, and he was amenable to my jumping into the photo with him. Thank you, Ian!

His still recovering from some injuries, this was the only time we crossed paths during the 5k. (Often in previous Dopey weekends we wound up seesawing with each other between the various photo stops.)

And surprisingly enough, there really weren't all that many photo stops during the race.

This kid was a rockstar. He was running fast the whole time. We wound up seesawing the whole time, as I paused to take the photo ops, he was focused and kept on running. I was totally impressed by how well he was doing. And I never noticed an adult that he was ostensibly running with.

And, almost before you knew it, the race was over.

After getting my post-race food box and drinks, and gear check bag (no clothing change nor food/drink left in the bag; more on the contents in a bit), it was off to get all the post-race photos:

I was done with all of this maybe 40 minutes total after the start of the race. There were still LOTS of people who had not yet started. (!) So, as has been my wont the last couple of Disney 5ks, I made sure to go around to the back side of the runner's village where the buses evetually pick up the on-property runners to cheer on the back-of-the-packers.

To save my hands from clapping for 20 minutes, I had gear-checked a cow bell, which I was now ringing persistently. While sporting the medal around my neck, I used my otherwise free hand to show the item that is a joke of inspriation to the vast majority of regulars: the fake cheese sauce that is almost always one of the items in the post-race food box. (There was one race weekend where runDisney replaced it with hummus and they ere REAMED for doing so.) "Bling and fake cheese ahead!" "It's all about the fake cheese!" 

After about 5-10 minutes, Laura and Jacque (each/both of whom I would be running some of the other races later in the week) came by. They were actually on their 2nd lap!

I made sure to stay until the absolute last people in the last mini-wave of the last corral came by before I stopped cheering. It was maybe 6:15am. PLENTY of time for me to drive up to my hotel, shower and change, and then drive back down to Yacht Club to meet up with Laura, Jacque, and Robert for our breakfast reservation at Ale & Compass, while their respective antics for the morning were such that they were still in their respective race outfits.

It was time to trek back to my hotel to drop off my medal and head off to Universal for the day, making sure as best possible to get back in the evening a little earlier so I could get more than 3.5 hours of "sleep" before the 10k on Thursday.