Goofy Challenge 2011 - Part I

After grocery shopping on Thursday morning, we drove in to Disney to hit the expo and then move on to the park at Universal. I decided to hit the expo early on Thursday morning. Last year, we were there just before noon and the lines and crowds weren’t bad at all. That wasn’t the case this year. The parking lot was completely full, and we ended up parking in the field across the street.

While Heather and her mother went off to the expo to do some shopping, Jim and I walked in to the Milk building (or whatever it’s called now) to get my packet. Like last year, it was much nicer to not have to go up and down the stairs to accomplish this. Paying that extra money for Goofy does get you a few perks. There was no line at all, so I walked right up, checked in, and was given an envelope that wasn’t quite the normal size you’d expect to contain bibs and other race instructions. I opened it up and read it while the guy helping me was busy getting my real packet. The envelope contained our park pass for Monday and instructions on how to activate it that morning. After being handed my other packet containing my bibs and D-tags, I was just about to sign the book verifying I had received them when I noticed the age printed on the outside of the envelope said “27.” I put down the pen and read the bibs and names on them carefully. Good thing I did. I had been given packet 4603, not my number of 3603. With that momentary panic behind me, we went off to find the ladies and do some shopping of our own.

I also had to make sure I found my friend Stan. He’s a guy I know from Dailymile and Twitter, and part of the group of five of us (Eva, Jenn, Devin are the others) that had shirts custom-made for Goofy. I’ve used Sport Science gear for years, and they were really great in turning around our small order very quickly. We used one of their designs, made the appropriate modifications for our 39.3 mile endeavor, and then asked them to print our usernames on the back. Even though none of us ran together, it was still pretty cool to know we all had the same shirts. I got some really good comments about mine during the race on Sunday.

I didn’t spend as much at the expo as I normally do. I always try to stock up on running shoes, but there weren’t any good deals to be found. The Kayano-17s that I bought in San Antonio for $100 were $140, and there weren’t any Kayano-15s in my size to be found. I could have bought some 16s for $99, but I’m not crazy about them. They don’t fit me nearly as well or as comfortably as the 15s or the 17s. I ended up buying a Goofy fleece top from Disney and a pair of compression shorts from CW-X, and that’s it. The expo got progressively more crowded while we were there, so we didn’t stay too long. Plus, we had an afternoon of rides and roller coasters to get to.

Speaking of which, the new Harry Potter section of Universal is excellent. They’ve done a fabulous job of recreating Hogwarts, the Three Broomsticks, Hog’s Breath, and all the other well-known landmarks from the books. It’s so close to what Disney does, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were ex-Disney employees who worked on it. The new ride is a good one too. Not as good as their Hulk coaster or the Spiderman ride, but still quite good. One word of advice - don’t wait in the very long line. Go up the singles line instead. Your wait will be a lot shorter that way.