Coast-to-Coast with the Disneyland Dumbo Double Dare

This Labour Day weekend, I earned my runDisney Coast to Coast Challenge medal. A few short days after I did Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge in January, the Disneyland Dumbo Double Dare was announced. A very similar concept to Goofy, but a much more civilized distance of a 10K on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday, I just couldn’t resist – after all, Dumbo is one of my all-time favourite Disney characters, and I had never been to Disneyland.

Of course, now that I am sitting here, trying to write a race report, I find myself in the exact same predicament that I did with Goofy: how do you put something so epic into words that do it justice? I am not trying to be precious when I say it is hard to describe the Disney magic – but it really is! Yep, I have totally drunk the Kool-Aid.

Anyway, let’s see…maybe I should do this in pictures.

On Friday morning, I had the privilege of attending the Social Media Meet Up. The 10K has an Alice in Wonderland theme, so you may notice a few features from that movie:

The inaugural Disneyland 10K started at 6:15 in the morning (theoretically, if you wanted, you could run the 5K and the 10K, as the 5K started at 5:30 – you just have to watch your timing as the races start in waves). We headed out into the streets of Anaheim in the dark – but it was quite humid that morning. We got into Disney’s California Adventure Park at about 2.5 miles, then on to Disneyland at about 3.5 miles, then for the grand finale, ran through Downtown Disney for mile 6.

On Sunday, the half marathon began at 5:30 am. Being on Eastern time, that was like a wonderful 8:30 am start, but with all of the cool and dark of 5:30 – and it was much less humid. I thought I would be disappointed that the course left the parks at mile 4, but the entertainment for the remaining 9 miles was really quite spectacular. I didn’t get as many pictures on Sunday – which I regret, by the way – but here are a few…