Picking up from yesterday –
This was actually a gigantic point of contention with this year’s Dopey Challenge. I wasn’t there, but I read about it. The half marathon was cancelled. So, some people went out and ran 13.1 miles in the middle of their multi-day running adventure, because they wanted to feel they earned their Dopey medals…
And there was soooo much back and forth on running message boards.
Some people were like, “Disney gave me no choice! They cancelled it. And I still wanted to finish. Therefore I went and did it on my own. And I’m counting myself as a Dopey finisher because I did the mileage – even at the location – on the day I was supposed to. That’s gotta be enough.” (I’m inclined to agree with them…)
But then others chimed in. “So you ran around 13 miles? Even with a group of people, that’s a training run, my friend. Races are races for a reason. There’s adrenaline. There’s order. You can’t count every time you run a half or marathon distance as doing a race. That’s ridiculous.”
And I can see that side too.
To me, there was no magical consensus as to the “right” answer. People are choosing to view it however they want.
But because there is so much controversy around the idea of counting it, I chose not to run 26.2 in Clearwater by myself and count it as a marathon.
I do not begrudge or judge the people who do. Again, I’m more in that camp than the other one.
But because I’m doing a gigantic project (and it’s for charity), I don’t want anything that happens to have an asterisk next to it of any reason why it maybe wouldn’t be counted as actually real.
For me, I thought that day could be better used to catch up on sleep – which is what I did.
As far as the t-shirt and medal, my best guess is that I’m going to give it to charity – unless I decide to display it anyway (in however I display all the medals for the 882 project) for the memory of the race that wasn’t.
And this is where I’ll pick up tomorrow!