2nd Annual Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge

Since my parents and brother have moved down to Florida, my sister lives in Ohio, and I live in Minneapolis, it's tough to get the family together for any occasion.  Money is often tight between all of us so I came up with a great idea:  at the beginning of January let's get together at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Immediately this may sound like a completely contradictory idea.  If money is tight, why go to one of the most expensive places on Earth?  A few reasons why this isn't meant to be as much of a penny pincher's nightmare include

1. We all know it is going to happen so we can save for the event for a whole year.
2. We don't buy each other presents or make other types of purchases during the year.  This lets us save a little more green.
3. Disney's Marathon weekend just happens to be at the same time that we meet at the resort each year.

Being the oldest child with a family spread out all across the country and a mother whose soul is tormented by not being able to see her kids, I tried to think of the most convenient way we could all get together during this time.  As any responsible kid, I also realize that while I love my parents to death and wouldn't trade them for anything, too much family time is a very realistic problem and one that must be addressed.

The very real problem here involves balancing 3 different finances, 3 different schedules, the avoidance of too much family time, and getting everyone together without bankrupting everyone during the Christmas season.

In my search for an answer I discovered the Walt Disney World marathon weekend.  The answer literally fell in my lap.  The marathon weekend is typically the first weekend of January.  This answers the problem of getting everyone together for Christmas.

The only people paying for plane tickets would be me and my sister.  We can easily afford those.  Hotel costs are a necessary evil but I'm more than happy with staying at the low cost, budget Disney accommodations.  Plus, my parents can afford that and I can even help them pay for it.  So finances are taken care of.

Everyone knows about this weekend event a year in advance so time is not an issue.

Finally, too much family time is easily taken care of because I have to run the half and full marathons so there's  lots of prep time and lots of recovery time.

So, in January 2007, I ran Goofy's Race and a Half Challenge.  That involves running the half marathon on Saturday followed by the marathon on Sunday.  It was a lot of fun.  Here are the maps if you're interested in seeing.

What a lot of fun that was.  Pictures will follow but I wanted to get this up there for you all to see.