Once upon a time, I eagerly showed up at my running club for the Disney raffle, hoping for a pink T-shirt with the word “princess” written in rhinestones across the front.
Instead,  I came home with an entry ticket to the Goofy Challenge, a half marathon followed by a marathon, back to back with only one day in between.  Yikes!  This was the grand prize and worth a fair amount (350 dollars!) so I felt very special.  But the truth is, I had never run a marathon, let alone a marathon-and-a-half.  When my running mate assured me it was “not a problem”,  I eagerly chose to believe her.

By November, I had torn my Achilles so I spent the holidays feeling sorry for myself and eating cookies rather than lining up on that first weekend in January when the race takes place.  But by July, I had run my first marathon, and by August, I had talked the very nice Disney representative who had arranged for the first entry into allowing me to transfer it along with my friend to this year.   Here i am again.  Take 2: Disney Double.

Oh my.  I book my flight to Orlando and my achilles tightens in response.  Please don’t hurt me, it says.   I frantically search the pages of my well worn copy of Run Less, Run Faster, and paste together a complicated combination of factors to create my hopefully injury-free training schedule.  I’ll explain that later but for now, suffice it to say that I am a bit behind.  This is where you, oh invisible reader come in.  I am going to write this blog, once a week (I promise) to check in on how I am doing and tell the world because the world wants to know, right?