Thinking About How to Train For Dopey Challenge

The Dopey Challenge is the new race that runDisney has announced for the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend January 9-12. It means running the 5k on Thursday, 10k Friday , half marathon Saturday and full marathon Sunday. You get the medal for each race and in addition you get the Goofy Challenge medal for completely the half and full and than the Dopey Challenge medal for completing ALL of them. Again, I’m half crazy so this sounds really fun to me. I LOVE proving to myself what I can accomplish.

I have ran the Goofy Challenge the last 2 years and I run quite a few long distance races all year, so I’m not that concerned about the mileage. Quite honestly what will be the hardest part for me is getting up at 3am to catch the bus to the race 4 days in a row. Coming from the west coast with a 3 year old it is hard to get her in bed by midnight, which means about 3 hours of sleep for me, if I’m lucky, before my alarm goes off.
Regardless, training is still in order. I am not a doctor or professional trainer.
I’ve just been thinking about how I’m going to tweak what I did to train for Goofy to get me ready for Dopey. (Lol) That sentence made me giggle.
So for Goofy I ran back to back long runs, ie: I would run 10 miles Friday and than 15 on Saturday and would build my mileage each week and then taper at the end. I would also do 2 other days a week of short runs. Anywhere from 3.5-8 miles I considered a short run. The back to back long runs was to prepare my body for the back to back half and full marathons it would be running. In Dopey training I’m planning to add the short runs in a row with the long. Same idea, get my body used to it. Than a day off than a short 3 mile and maybe some yoga or cross training and than a day off and the 4 day training runs again. So it would look something like this:

Monday- 2 mile run and a yoga class
Tuesday- Rest
Wednesday- 3.5 mile run
Thursday- 6 mile run
Friday- 10 mile run
Saturday- 14 mile run
Sunday- Rest

And build mileage and than taper accordingly.

On the flip side I have never done a Runners World Challenge and they are offering one for the Dopey Challenge. I’ve wanted to try one and this might be a good race to invest the money and do it with. It is a little pricey, but would be a great experience.

Do you have any thoughts about your training if you are planning to go Dopey?