Chapter 2 - Retirement and a New Focus on Health and Fitness

 

2023 runDisney Dopey Registration, or Maybe Not

My retirement from Corporate America was fast approaching at the end of March 2022.  My plan was to work on health and fitness and build toward my Dopey Dream, I mean my dream of finishing the Dopey Challenge.  

Cat and I did some traveling in April, and I missed the registration day for RunDisney Marathon Weekend 2023.  I realized it when people started posting YouTube videos of their harrowing registration experiences.  People were in tears because Dopey was sold out before they could enter their credit card information.  Or they got into Dopey, but their best friend who they planned on running with could only get into one of the races.  Apparently training for Dopey is not the hardest part, one must first play runDisney registration roulette. 

Then I remembered the charity runners.  I checked a few charity websites.  They had already distributed their allotment for Dopey registrations.  Oh my!  I had missed 2023 already.  Lesson learned for 2024.  But we can still work on health and fitness to confirm that it is physically possible.

A New Lifestyle of Health and Fitness

After some travel in April and Early May of 2022, I started getting into a rhythm or regular exercise, mostly running.  By mid-June I was running 5-6 days a week and logging 30-35 miles.  I was very pleased that I was able to sustain that level of running into July.  I started planning four-day consecutive runs to see how my legs did on the fourth day.  Not bad even though I was not running half/full marathon distances.  But I felt optimistic for Dopey.  I just had to figure out how to play the registration game to get in.

One of our travel destinations in May was Tuscany, Italy.  Here's a time-lapse video of a Tuscany sunset from our Airbnb:


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