Dopey Challenge Race Report – 10K

January 16, 2015 Faux Runner Comments 8 comments

After kicking off the Dopey Challenge with the 5K on Thursday, our strategy should’ve been to kick back and put our feet up. Instead, I dragged everyone along to Harry Potter world in the afternoon. And we walked around a ton (well, du’h!). So I showed up to the start of the 10K on Friday

Sleepy
With aching legs. Make that killer aching legs.
but complete with awesome costume for our themed race!

I had teamed up with Julie Anderson and 101+ others to bring back the 101 Dalmatians to life! I was Cruella deVille and Barry & Ajit were Horace & Jasper, Cruella’s henchmen (more popularly known as Hugh Laurie and Arthur Weasley).

We started off and were greeted by Anna & Elsa from above a bridge, complete with snow. Although I’m sure we all could’ve done with summer coming back instead of more cold!

We had our usual mile marker shenanigans.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.19.06 PM — Mile marker shenanigans

We even had the time for some time for character pictures.

Then there were characters for whom there was a LONG wait. Like Mushu the dragon in front of China. He never came out even though we waited for quite a long time.

We were in the line for baseball Mickey, when all of a sudden –

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.04.20 PM — Just look at the TIME!!! Oh dear, Oh dear!!

We saw the “Balloon” ladies telling all us Dopey to get moving if we wanted to make the cut off !! Balloon ladies, so named because they carry a balloon are participants from the local running group who start at the end of the corrals and maintain a 16min/mile pace. So if you fall behind them, you are likely to be in trouble!

So instead we took a far-off shot of Mickey and scurried up!!

Seeing the balloon ladies unnerved me a bit. Not because I thought I would fall behind them and not make it in time (I knew I could outrun them if needed), but just that we had lost a lot of time and we still had about 1.5-2 miles to go. AND missed photo ops with Mushu and Mickey because I was slow.

So I did a quick power charge.

And made it to the finish with plenty of time to spare.

Finisher photo with bib and medals were a requirement to verify if we finished the Dopey Challenge.

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.53.35 PM — Met Ingrid and her friend who had started corrals in front but had plenty of phototastic fun !!

Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.53.59 PM — A mini-photo meetup with some of the ladies who were Dalmatian “puppies”

On the 5K day, I’d missed meeting Dopey because we had no idea where he was! So knowing that I wouldn’t want to stand in line after a half marathon, I opted to wait in the LONG line to meet Dopey. And also got to meet Daisy!