Mrs. Cups and I are no strangers to road races and are frequent participants in RunDisney half marathons and such. We decided, while we’re still relatively young and childless, to go all out and do the Dopey Challenge.
Dopey, for those who don’t know, is doing a 5k, 10k, half marathon and full marathon in four consecutive days. We accomplished the first three without too terribly much difficulty, but the marathon was always going to be the great unknown. We have never done a full marathon before, much less done one after all those other races.
We ended up getting through it due to the kindness of strangers and the determination of “we’re in this together”.
(A quick note about Disney races (this may be true of others, but we only do Disney so I don’t know): In order to finish you must maintain a 16 min pace, otherwise you get swept by the dreaded balloon ladies.)
It was around mile two when we overheard a woman telling another younger couple about her experiences doing the Disney Marathon. She explained to them how she has done them multiple times and has walked the entire thing and completes them every time. The couple said it was their first ever Dopey and they would stick by her. She accepted.
At this point, Mrs. Cups and I quietly said: “You know, we should do the same thing.” But instead of just quietly stalking everyone, we decided to say “Hey, can we join?”
Everyone accepted and it was with this core group of people, all complete strangers up until that moment, that we all completed our marathon.
It’s just cool to think that in this argumentative and divided world (looking at you politics followers) that random people who share a love of Disney (and a tacit acceptance of running long ass distances) can come together and say “We’re going to get through this…and we’ll do it together”.
We all took a picture together at the finish line and just before we parted we made sure to say thank you. The two couples thanked our fearless leader for giving us the strategy and confidence to finish. She turned right around and thanked us for giving her the motivation to keep going, to let all of us finish. A mutually beneficial partnership that will literally have life-lasting results.
Just a little nice story I figured I’d share 