My Journey to the Walt Disney World Marathon — Part One: Getting to Registration Day
In which our intrepid runner faces the great hurdles of our modern age: Health and Technology
About 6 years ago I was sitting in the office of a grumpy orthopedic doctor in a northern California Kaiser facility who couldn’t understand why I was there.
“They told me that I should have a six-month check-up after my surgery.”
“Why, what’s wrong?”
“Well, I suppose it aches a little.”
“What do you expect after a break that severe? It’s never going to be the same.”
“So what does that mean? What kind of exercise can I do now? Can I get back to running?”
“You are 6'11” weighing 260 lbs. Every step slams that weight into your broken leg. You are done with running.”
… which is why it’s a strange thing for me to be sitting here writing about the journey I’m on: the quest to complete the 2024 Walt Disney World Marathon.
I’ve decided to write this informal series to give people an account of my journey and what I might learn as I move through this, perhaps insane, undertaking. I’m also writing it to keep myself accountable and on-track. Finally, I’m writing it to hopefully connect with some fellow runners who are travelling along a similar path.
We’re stronger together.
A few things to know about me; as pointed out above I’m VERY tall, very much the antithesis of a running person’s size. I am also a grateful recovering alcoholic who is ten-years sober. As noted above, I had a very severe accident a while back where my right leg’s tibia was broken in a spiral and now has a large titanium rod in it. I have minor retrolisthesis in my lumbar spine: the discs are shifting a little forward (a point of much drama to come, I promise). And, about a year ago, at age 55, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
It is often hard to know the workings of one’s own mind, but when a colleague had tried to talk me into the marathon two years ago, I wasn’t ready. After the cancer diagnosis, I decided that it was time to become ready.
An anecdote gets told about the production of Saturday Night Live where someone asked Lorne Michaels, the show’s long time producer, how he knew when an episode was ready. His response was, “We don’t do the show because it’s ready. We do the show because it’s 11:30 on Saturday Night.”
Now let me allay any concerns if you were wondering, my cancer is well in check, low grade, eminently treatable and I’m probably more likely to get hit by a bus than it to do me in. But a cancer diagnosis will change your perspective on things like aging, and running marathons.
Another piece of my puzzle is that I have been a Disney fan since I was a kid in the 70s and never really let go. Currently I do quite a bit of writing about Disney and theme parks in general over at Boardwalk Times (https://boardwalktimes.net/) where our editor-in-chief, Zach Perilstein, has been kind enough to let me explore my interests on his site and is generous enough to encourage me to keep doing it even after he reads what I write! (Egaads!)
I have been an occasional runner, off-and-on, for the last twenty years and, while I’ve never participated in a marathon, did manage to finish the San Francisco Half in 2012. I see you all doing the math in your heads; yes, I was still drinking then and, yes, my time was terrible. This year, however, I was ready if my doctor agreed, which is where this story gets a little harrowing.
If you are not familiar with the Walt Disney World Marathon, let me tell you that it is a huge event. It draws over 100,000 participants and spectators over the four-day weekend in January. The races consist of a 5k, 10k, Half and Full Marathon. There are also multiple race challenges such as the Goofy (running both the Half and the Full) and the dreaded Dopey (running all four races). The Marathon itself winds through all of Walt Disney World’s major theme parks, starts at 5:00 A.M. and has a 16-minute per mile pace requirement.
Most importantly for this story today, however, I want to talk about the stress of actually signing up for the event. The Disney World Marathon weekend has gone from a high-demand event to one that is now maddeningly difficult to get into at all in the last few years. To get a bib for the race, you need to be online and logged into the runDisney website (https://www.rundisney.com/) a little bit before the spots become available. You need to have already entered your payment information and have all of your personal data at the ready to fill out the registration forms. Most people log into multiple devices — phone, tablet, PC — to help increase their odds. Then, depending on the race, you have minutes to get in the electronic queue for your particular event before the spots are all gone. Even if you manage that, it’s a crapshoot.
And this is why a sudden flare-up of back issues a week before sign-up day was a major problem.
I had already cleared my running with my current doctor (Take THAT, grumpy Orthopedist!), but I am tall and tall people have back problems and he had told me to err on the side of caution.
I once was having a discussion on a plane with a guy almost as tall as me. One of the first things he said was, “Have you started your back surgeries yet?” No, and I still haven’t; knock on wood.
When I woke up with sudden muscular back pain near my kidneys one morning a few weeks before the sign-up day one of my first concerns was, “Will this go away before I need to apply for my bib?”
I quickly reached out to my doctor who was unavailable, but a second doctor decided to send me for an x-ray when the pain hadn’t gone away for about a week. By the time of the x-ray, the pain had started a kind of weird migration down my back and was luckily beginning to fade. What the x-ray revealed, however, was a lumbar spinal retrolisthesis which I hadn’t known about before (the aforementioned migrating disks). With this new information I was going to need to make SURE that the doctor was still ok with marathon training before I signed up as runDisney offers absolutely no refunds or exchanges after you purchase your registration… and the doctor I needed still wasn’t back in his office. (Doctors taking vacations; who ever heard of such a thing?)
Finally he returned and I got an appointment, the day before race registration went live! I was getting nervous. My blood pressure was up (which is a different story, actually) and I arrived in his office, ready with my questions.
We looked at the x-ray and I asked, “So, can I keep running?”
He thought for a second and said, “It depends. How are you feeling after you run?”
Now this was great because when my back had started hurting I hadn’t run for over a week and I was able to say some reassuring things about how running had seemingly not been affecting my body.
“I don’t see any reason you need to stop then.”
I was, literally, off to the races!
Registration morning my whole family was rooting me on. I’d collected three different devices, my wife had brought my breakfast to my computer desk and everyone was holding their breath. First device that got in the queue, my PC, showed a wait of about forty-one minutes. The other two showed over an hour. After around ten minutes had passed — I was warned to not touch ANYTHING once I was in the queue — none of the times had budged. A running discussion group on the Rise and Run Podcast Facebook group showed tons of other people going through the same experience, all in various states of stress and panic, but all also supporting each other and trying to be reassuring.
Pro tip: logging in to the site on multiple web browsers on the same device doesn’t work.
Suddenly, two of the timers started moving and my growing despondance started to turn around. Dropping by ten and fifteen minute chunks my PC was, almost unexpectedly, at the registration page! I had copied every piece of info that I was told I might need onto a notepad so that my trembling fingers wouldn’t mistype anything and I could move quickly. Before I knew it, I had the confirmation; I was registered for the 2024 Walt Disney World Marathon!
My kid high-fived me and my wife was cheering loudly. I may have been in shock.
What did I just do?
Coming soon: Training Begins in Earnest
If you enjoyed this piece and want to look at some of my other writing about Disney and theme parks and stuff, give these a try.
Thank you so much for reading. If you feel especially appreciative and would like to support me in this journey, consider dropping a few bucks into the kitty, https://ko-fi.com/kellymccubbin. From northern California to Orlando ain’t cheap.
And if you’re a runner and just want to say “Hey!” please don’t hesitate to reach out.