Sunday, August 23, 2009

Running Disney, where's the trails?

Went to Disney for the weekend. I was there presenting INVEST research regarding angina and risk of heart attacks at the Florida chapter of the American College of Cardiology. I'm going strong with my base training and been doing just over 30 miles a week, so I definitely needed to find a way to get some miles in. With all the green space and knowing that Disney supports a Marathon, I figured it might be easy to find a place to run.

Turns out that they do have some options, but it was not that easy to figure out. Their website mentions trails, but the map was dysfunctional when I visited. We were staying at the Boardwalk Inn resort near Epcot and I headed to the front desk where the very nice young man from Holland had no idea where there were any trails. Over to the concierge who did have a map of a few trails, but it turns out that the longest trail was only about 2 miles out. Thankfully I only really wanted/needed a 4 to 5 mile run it was not too bad for me, but I was intrigued that apparently no one asks about these trails often, otherwise all the mouseketeers would be briefed on them. I wonder if perhaps people just resign themselves to the basement dreadmills.

Admittedly, the weather was still melt-in-the-direct-sun-and-nothing-evaporates-due-to-the-humidity for the most part, but the trail that I selected was actually shaded enough to be tolerable. I was able to get 4 miles in on Sat AM at about 5 (prior to the meeting start), and Sun I ran 5 around noon and managed to keep up a ~7:45 pace.

Best of luck to Laura who is just a couple months out from MCM in DC and was stuck doing her daily 8 milers in the basement at the hotel!

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