When the wake up alarm startled me out of bed. my body screamed, Excuse me!?   Yes, body,  it IS 3:40AM, and no, not the 12:40 AM it would be if you were still at home, cuddled up in your cozy bed in California.  No-no, so sorry.   I am afraid that there is no more sleep for you  because that would be yesterday and today is today and yes, that does mean that you are in Disneyworld.   Really- I made it?!  Yippee!  Let’s GO!

There could be no doubt of my whereabouts when a flock of Tinkerbells greeted my first step off of the bus into the pitch darkness of this “magic morning”.   Fluttering about trying to stay warm, hands wrapped around cups of coffee, my fellow runners were wearing their green winged memories, signs that they had indulged in one of the many options for appropriately runner-friendly Disney attire.    The start line bull pens resembled the crescendo scene from Swan Lake:  tutus, Minnie Mouse ears and polka dotted shirts a plenty.   I felt oddly under-dressed in my standard runners shirt and pants, having arrived at the party only to realize it was a black tie, or shall i say, a green wing affair!

Fireworks burst in thin air as we stood, arms crossed over our hearts, singing the national anthem.   The gun went off while Mickey, Donald and Goofy (of course, it is after all the Goofy Challenge) danced a little dance, waved the royal wave and generally cheered us along.  Off we went into the darkness toward Epcot and in through the gates to the Magic Kingdom.

Disneyworld is certainly an entertainment machine of the highest order and the Goofy Challenge is no exception in proving that role.    That said, no matter how surreal, hyper-real, simulcra, and Derrida this and that the Goofy Challenge was, it was surprisingly moving to navigate the streets of the Magic Kingdom,  past Cinderella’s castle with the sunrise coming up, serenaded by When You Wish Upon a Star tracing my every step.  The pink light of dusk pleasantly obscured the details so that for a moment, even this most pastiche weary of intellectuals could suspend her disbelief.  Disneyworld captures an American spirit of peppy upbeat capitalism. I like the rest of us, grew up with pixie dust in my Midwestern koolaid.  It can happen to you.  If you just believe.  Dreams can come true.

I kept my promise to myself and laid back, taking it slow, having pictures taken of myself with strangely scary enlarged versions of familiar cartoon characters.  I crossed the finish line with an extra fifty minutes added to my normal time and was still back at the hotel long before 10AM, plenty of time for a lesiurely snack and coffee before heading out to Disneyworld for a look in the harsh light of the day.  Once there, the architect in me found the omnipresent layer of entertainment exhausting and my hotel was definitely nothing like the New Orleans I had visited and loved.  We wandered around looking for a dinner that was close to healthy but found instead a pair of Mickey Mouse earrings that I quite like.  Disneyworld is after all first and foremost about finding something to buy so I complied.

DAY 2, I was the pro and knew the drill.  My clothes had been laid out the night before at the bottom of my bed, so dressing was a matter of rolling over and in.   I did not falter over how to make the coffee in my hotel room or where to catch the bus.  I ate the last half banana and stuffed a predetermined nut bar in my pants for the bus ride.  I felt confident that if I went slow, I would definitely finish and also knew that there would be a haunting wisp of disappointment in that decision.  But first, I needed to run and run and run some MORE!

Twenty six point two miles goes a long way toward circumnavigating the park and for me it was the perfect way to experience all that Disneyworld has to offer.  Thank you very much!   I experienced the Animal Kingdom with live animals held out by zoo keeper, and  got a second look at Cindarella’s castle (this time Prince Charming was there for photos).  Crowds cheered us along (the added length meant the park had opened before I was done).  We looped, all 20k of us,  around the lagoon at Epcot, past the shops and “villages” I had visited the day before, marveling how the definition of International can be transmogrified to mean Northern European.  My mind wandered, South America, Tahiti, Africa, New Zealand? and another few miles or so went by.  Tomorrowland with it’s 60’s inspired vision of the future begged the question, how to preserve an outdated depiction of the future which is by now an important remnant of the past?   Or at least to me, it begged, and maybe whined a little too.  What responsibility did Disneyworld feel to preserve what has now become an icon of Americana?  Another mile clicked by and another.

We ran through the gates of Universal studios, finding first New York and then Miami and only eventually was there LA and Hollywood.  In and out of each park, through the gates and past the garage trucks and back of the stage supporting spaces,  aware of the boundaries of what is allowed in and what is left out before entering the magic space of Disney artifice.

Goofy kissed me and Donald hugged me and Mickey danced his little dance as I without much fanfare crossed the finish line and was done!  Like most races,  I meandered, collecting oranges, bottles of water and space blankets, a disoriented drone who didn’t reach his queen bee.  After all the training, the race was in many ways, so easy.

Here’s an amazing thing about running.   You take on a task as daunting and crazy as the Goofy Challenge.  You break it down into a schedule that you follow.  You check off the mileage that you promised yourself you would do and you did.  You get hurt and you fail, but then you try again.  Then one day, you wake up and run longer than you ever dreamed was possible for you to do but you did.

I gathered my flip flops and headed for the beach..