Rise and Run
Rise and Run
219: Dead Last Start: Stories, Data, and Disney Magic
In this episode, we shine a spotlight on one of the most misunderstood parts of the runDisney experience—the Dead Last Start. Often seen as a disadvantage, the DLS is actually a unique community filled with resilience, camaraderie, and surprising benefits.
We’ll break down what the Dead Last Start really is, clear up common misconceptions, and hear firsthand stories from runners who’ve embraced starting at the very back. From the balloon ladies to the pacing challenges, from the data and graphs shared in Facebook groups to the laughter and costumes that make DLS special, this conversation uncovers the magic behind the miles.
Whether you’re a front‑of‑the‑pack runner or someone who’s ever worried about being placed in DLS, this episode proves that every start line has a story and every finish line is worth celebrating.
From Crunchwraps to Chalupas, we hear from Divya who ran the Taco bell 50tk where runners cover 31 miles, stopping at nine Taco Bell locations to eat a menu item at each. With an 11-hour limit,
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Brianna, this is a family-oriented podcast. You're gonna wear Greg's beeping finger out.
SPEAKER_09:Alright, I I I I want to deem this one as one of the most epic episode intros we have ever had before. So I I'm I'm here for it. It was real, it was genuine, it was from the heart.
SPEAKER_11:Yes, it was. I remember when she recorded it. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for doing it. Hey, we're out, gang. We'll remind you here in just a minute, we're out of uh intros, so we'll run that number by you in a minute. Before we get there, hey, welcome to episode 219 of the Rise and Run Podcast. We're so glad you are with us. I'm Bob and I'm here this week with Greg. Hey, hey, hey, with John. How are you doing? And with Alicia.
SPEAKER_04:Hello.
SPEAKER_11:All right, my friends, let's see. This week, hey, we had an interesting conversation with Brian from the Dead Last Start group at Disney World. Very was very informative and uh lots of fun talking with Brian. While we have many races to go over in the race report this week, we still found time to record a spotlight because if you do a 50K at various Taco Bells, like Divya did this weekend, why you just need to talk about it.
SPEAKER_01:If you enjoy the Rise and Run Podcast, please share with your friends and introduce them to the Rise and Run family. We want to share in their Run Disney journey. Please remember to follow us on Facebook that Rise and Run Podcast or at Instagram on Rise Run Pod, check out our YouTube channel, and visit our webpage, Rise and Run Podcast.com. If you have a question, comment, race report, or want to introduce an upcoming episode, as you know we don't have any, and we can call us at 727-266-2344 and leave us a recorded message.
SPEAKER_11:You know what I should do one of these days, John? I should turn DND off and answer one of those live. That'd freak somebody out, I think. Oh my god. I'm not even sure I know how to do it. I might give it a try.
SPEAKER_01:Hi. Can I get a pizza?
SPEAKER_06:We also want to thank our patrons whose support helps keep the Rise and Run Podcast rising and running. If you'd like to join the Patreon team, please check us out at patreon.com slash rise and run podcast.
SPEAKER_09:The Rise and Run Podcast is sponsored by our incredible friends over at Magic Bound Travel. And folks, day of recording, we got some epic Disney experience news. What? Yes. Bigger than Epic Universe opening, bigger than you know, all the new stuff that's coming in 2026. This is the creme de la creme of Disney News, and that is it's finally happening, folks. Bluey is coming to Walt Disney World, Disneyland, and Disney Cruise line. And to say that I'm excited is the understatement of the century. So much awesome stuff. So apparently, so on Disney Cruise line, I think it's it's happening beginning of 2026. I want to say February on a couple of ships. I want to say it's the dream and the wish. You'll be able to meet Bluey and Bingo on the ship. In Disneyland, there's going to be a whole brand new show at the uh Fantasyland Theater that just looks absolutely awesome. And then in Disney World, it looks like they're going to be transforming part of uh the conservation station in Animal Kingdom, and you're going to be able to meet Bluey and Bingo back there, and they're going to have animals that are native to Australia and New Zealand. And oh, just the possibilities are endless for probably the greatest children's television program, at least in my opinion, since Sesame Street itself. So if you want to meet Bluey, Bingo, do the dance, you know, have your magic asparagus, play keepy uppy. If you want to do all this stuff, you gotta contact MagicboundTravel.com, chat with one of their awesome agents, and they can get you set up on an awesome vacation. Again, land, cruise line, world, and all of their services are completely free to use. So again, magicboundtravel.com. And you know, and I'm so excited, you know what? I think I might have to do like a special like Patreon episode of like my top five favorite episodes of Bluey and and tell people why. So if I have some time this weekend, I might have that coming to fruition.
SPEAKER_11:Oh golly.
SPEAKER_01:Bluey in the big blue house, right? Great, Greg.
SPEAKER_09:That was that was Bear in the Big Blue House.
SPEAKER_01:I know, but I was just saying, I guess that's the vibe I got. I thought maybe they're gonna be using they'll be used at his old spot in Magic Hollywood Studios.
SPEAKER_09:Well, see, that's the thing. Uh when I heard all this news about, I mean, granted, this was months and months and months ago that Bluey was going to be coming to the parks. I thought it was at they were gonna do something in Hollywood Studios. You know, they're doing all that construction now with Star Wars launch band, and they're gonna bring it back like to the like the animation courtyard stuff, and they closed down. John, I know your favorite attraction, Hollywood Studios, the Disney Junior Dance Party. Um, I was rocking that. So, what I thought is I thought they were gonna put a Bluey show in there. Now, I completely understand why they're doing Animal Kingdom to help bring more people to that park and push them to that specific part of the park. But I mean, maybe it's a possibility in the future, but um no, but I I did think that's where it was gonna go. But I I think this is an awesome idea uh that they came up with.
SPEAKER_11:Man, you're making me feel old, Greg. Two reasons for that. Number one, I am. Number two, I don't know what any of that stuff was you were talking about.
SPEAKER_09:Bob, if you get bored, just just launch Disney Plus and just search Bluey. They're it it's it's a children's cartoon, but they're eight minutes long, they're very, very short, but it's some of the most entertaining and emotional television that I have ever watched before in my life. Because believe it or not, this show was actually in its original concept made for adults about parenting, and then like during all the testing and such, they found a way almost kind of like with the Muppets, how like how there's like highbrow stuff for adults, but then there's plenty of stuff that kids love. Bluey is the 21st century version of that.
SPEAKER_11:I can think of, and we're off the rails here, but that's okay. That's all right. I can think of as I grew up, as I was a youngster, Rocky and Bullwinkle would come on, and my dad wouldn't miss it. And I would laugh and my dad would laugh, never at the same time. Yep. Later, when my son was growing up, the it was a Muppet animated series, The Dinosaurs. Yes, okay loved it. I would laugh, Nicholas would laugh, almost never at the same time. When the babies hit the guy with the frying pan and said, Not the mama, we're the mama. Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_09:You know, it's funny, I I saw this thing online years ago, and it was how a blue dog like has always defined a generation. So, like many, many moons ago, you had the old Hanna Barbera Huckleberry Hounds. And then probably now I was I was too old for it, but you had blues clues. You know, that was a cultural phenomenon, and now you have bluey. It's just really interesting that that a blue dog can be attached to so many generations. I think it's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_11:All right. All right. Let's, yeah, that's all good stuff. Let's get back to running. Let's uh let's take a look at the training schedule. It's as good a time as any, right? Marathon weekend! Five weeks away. Five weeks away. We gotta get uh we say this every season. We gotta get these holidays out of the way. All right, get Christmas, New Year's, Hanukkah, get them all out of the way, and then it's marathon weekend, but it's only five weeks away, training week twenty-three. Now, last week you had your first big simulation. So for the next two weeks, I'm gonna back off a little bit. If you're doing the marathon, you've got five miles on the training schedule, including a magic mile. If you're doing the challenges, you have four to six miles, and then your last big simulation comes up in two weeks.
SPEAKER_09:Hey Bob, I got a quick question about marathon weekend. Uh, what's the weather gonna be like? Can I start training now? Is it too late? Sorry. I I wanted to throw that in there.
SPEAKER_11:It is a good one. Uh let's see, Greg. Uh low of 51, high of 73. Write it down.
SPEAKER_09:All right, I'll take it.
SPEAKER_11:Uh let's see. Uh Disneyland Half, of course, follows not long after. It's eight weeks away. Training week 10, starting to get I'm looking now at the challenge distances. The two mile walk, the nine and a half mile run walk on this weekend. Princess Weekend, 12 weeks away. We're in training week six, looking at a six and a half mile long run. And I think we've mentioned this before, springtime surprise training cut starts in a couple of weeks. In fact, starts in exactly two weeks on the 16th of December. Oh, what else we got going on, kids? Uh, real quick look here. Our sailing day on the inaugural cruise. 138 days away. Be here before we know it. Still time. Still time to hop on board with us if you'd like to contact our friends at Magic Pound. Not too late.
SPEAKER_09:No, I wouldn't say I just saw someone on our Discord server say that they uh they just registered the other two. Oh, that's true. Yeah, so it's still still plenty of uh spots available.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, glad to hear it. Uh it should be fun. Really looking forward to that. Let's see. What is going on with training, my friends? We have any training updates to chat about?
SPEAKER_06:I did 18 miles on the treadmill before we recorded today.
SPEAKER_11:Well, no wonder. Yeah, way to go. Before we press the button, Alicia was saying, I'm so tired. Well, golly, 18 miles. I'm surprised you're here. Good for you. The other two or three hours on this podcast, you got your marathon in.
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, should count.
SPEAKER_06:It's very last week it snowed, and so it's snowy and icy out, which that would take out the factor of running outside anyway, but it's also very, very cold. Um, I think when I looked this morning, it was feels like temperature of like seven.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, I wouldn't look.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah. And the wind was strong, and I was like, Oh golly, no, that's I thought about going out for even like a couple miles and I was like, it's not worth the not worth the risk. So but it went it went okay. I watched the first part of Wicked, which I hadn't seen yet. So yeah.
SPEAKER_11:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Good job, Alicia. I did my uh five, my five mile, well, whatever you want to call it, my AK for the turkey trot on Thanksgiving. It was I was happy and I was actually disappointed at first when I did it, but then I realized what happened, so I was a little happier. Oh wow, my time was really good when I was done. My garment said I only did 4.75 miles. I'm like, wait, this is a 8K, this is almost a quarter mile short for this race. I go, I th because I first like you know, you're running and you know, I kind of what do you call it over my watch, uh a minute over my watch, so I couldn't really see it. So I go past the first mile, then about like I don't know, a little bit past my watch starts, but I say, Look, oh, one mile mark, that doesn't make any sense. I passed the mile marker. Well, I found out what happened, which made me feel a little happier about myself. Uh my garment didn't take up to GPS. So it was it was going thinking this by foot length.
SPEAKER_11:So it was counting like your cadence, like your your stride length.
SPEAKER_01:Stride length, then okay, that's that's a mile. So okay. So I said, oh wow, wow. Actually, I try I did better than I actually thought once I got the time when I was done. I go, how did I do this? Like, oh like I felt, oh, this is great, but I I'm sure a quarter of a mile. I would have been like another minute or two on this race, which I would have like I'm like, oh, so that was my my my thing on that race, which I was kind of unhappy about. And my watch is still whacked out right now. I don't know what's going on. Uh it takes forever to find the GPSs right now. I don't know if it's just uh time to bag it in and get a new one.
SPEAKER_09:You know, how old is your watch?
SPEAKER_01:Three three years? That not 255. Okay. So it's not that old, but you know, is it the Apple technology? Oh, but it's time your battery's dying, you gotta get a new phone type thing.
SPEAKER_11:I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:I don't know. I don't know. It's just I don't know what to do. I mean, I so now it takes like uh almost like a minute and a half, two minutes to find the satellites, which I don't know.
SPEAKER_09:Oh wow, that is a long time.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So no it's going on.
SPEAKER_09:Maybe you should ask Santa for a new running watch this holiday season.
SPEAKER_01:I know, I know. It's like, come on, Santa.
SPEAKER_09:Uh training for me uh has been uh pretty pedestrian uh this last week and a half or so. But uh a fun thing that I did yesterday, because unfortunately, with all the holiday plans that I had uh this past weekend, I didn't get a chance to do my quote unquote long run until Monday. And by that point, with the the timing and weather and you know, similar to you, Alicia, it's been blustery here and uh to the point where temps are well, well below average. So I went out into the treadmill, and uh similar to what a lot of folks have on their their schedules for this week, I had five miles with a magic mile, but I ended up texting Coach Twiggs and I was like, hey, is it at all possible to do a magic mile on the treadmill? Or should I just hey just do five miles and then you know, next time I'm outside, you know, just pick a mile and do one then? He said, Oh no, you can you can definitely do it. Uh he goes, just you know, maybe do less walk breaks and be safe about it because obviously you don't want to go so fast that you're falling off the back of the treadmill. So what I was able to do is I looked up what was because I know for my last couple I've been doing magic half miles as opposed to miles. So I found that time, and then when it was time for me to do the magic mile, I would like pump up the treadmill maybe like a couple of clicks faster than what my last magic mile time was. And then I went for like a half a mile, did a 30-second walk break, and then tried to push it out to the end. And and I, even though I only improved by one second, uh, which I was happy with, sure. Um, I also found it incredibly humbling because I was I was pretty gassed by the end of it, but also it gave me confidence though, because there have been times in my training where I've done magic half miles and I get the paces, and then you know, I get in my head, I'm like, you know, when you extrapolate it out to the mile, would I be able to hold that? So the fact that I was able to have the same pace both in the half mile version and the mile, uh, gave me a little confidence that my training is right where it needs to be. Uh so we're just gonna continue to improve on that. So yeah, overall, pretty happy.
SPEAKER_01:So, how did you how did you actually do that? Like with uh like figure, okay, I'm doing a 30-30 or like and how did how did you bring it back down?
SPEAKER_09:So, pretty much what I did was to to find out the speed, I you know, when you're on a treadmill, sometimes you know you can press the various buttons to get like different data points or whatever. So I changed it from I can't remember if it was time, like overall time, to like just the pace at that speed. So I just kept clicking it up until I got, you know, again, something faster than my previous magic mile. And then coach had told me that based on what my paces had been, it was his recommendation to only do one walk break at the half mile mark. So it, you know, so I didn't thankfully I didn't have to go up and down a lot over the course of that mile because if not, my mile would have been a heck of a lot slower then.
SPEAKER_11:So I do think it's remarkable. Here we are again. Hey, you know that stuff Jeff Galloway talks about? He was right, yeah. And you and I have discussed this in the past on and off the podcast. Gosh, I did that half, but when I started out, I know I was only doing a half, so I went really hard. I know I can't keep that up for a mile. How's that gonna work? And by golly, it works. It works, yep. It does. It it it's worked for me, it works, it's worked for you now, and uh Jeff runs the numbers on tens of thousands of people, and it does work. So good, good, glad to hear it. Uh, I wanted to update folks. I wanted once again the Rise and Run family God bless you guys. Uh the number, of course, last week I was talking, things weren't going all that well, and uh the amount of messages I got and the amount of encouragement were just wonderful, and I I do I appreciate every bit of it. Uh, take it to heart, it means a lot to me. Uh things are things have improved quite a bit, and I will be completely candid and say one of the things that's improved quite a bit is the health of our little dog Lily, and that means a lot to me, so that made my spirits feel a lot better. And I'm I really am going to go with I need to back down on my running and maybe not run at all for a little while. Walking, I mean when I was I was out today stepping out, I think I kept a fourteen thirty pace or something like that. I haven't looked. But I'm going to d do that and I'm going to walk for at least through uh marathon weekend and See how it goes. I think that will I think that's just a smart thing to do. Let the uh bones in the spine heal a little bit even more, and I think that's gonna work out okay. So once again, thank you so much, friends. It it means a lot to me, and I appreciate it. Now, in the training realm, one of the things I did on my walk today is walk my the first of my three 4Ks for the 12Ks of Christmas. Yeah. Light the lamp, not the rat. How did I get there?
SPEAKER_09:Anyway, no cheeses for us Mises.
SPEAKER_11:Uh the box arrived today. It's it's very nicely done. It really is. I got uh my beanie, which won't get a lot of wear here in Central Florida, where it is currently 69 degrees at 10 p.m.
SPEAKER_06:Uh you mean you don't want to wear it?
SPEAKER_11:I wear a hat most of the time.
SPEAKER_06:Right.
SPEAKER_11:But uh I'm sure I'll wear that beanie at some point. It's it's nice.
SPEAKER_09:You know what I just realized too? I mean, obviously, everyone knows about the soliloquy that I went on about how Run Disney was this close to coming up with a perfect race weekend. They could since they have a beanie in the box, it could have been themed after Bean Bunny.
SPEAKER_06:Yeah, you're right.
SPEAKER_09:Run Disney, hire me, please.
SPEAKER_11:Now, of course, the the 12Ks are Muppet themed, and Becky actually gave me permission to put my four little shoe ornaments on the Christmas tree, which is a big deal. That's a big deal for Becky to allow me to do that, so they're up there. Uh, what else was in there? Oh, I that's because I gave her the box of tea that came. Okay, so she got something out of it as well. It's you know, it's it's nice. They do a good job. The presentation is nice. Is it worth what you have to pay for it? That's up to you to decide. Uh, if you have no other way of getting Disney medals or getting involved in a Disney race, yeah, maybe it is. I I think many of you know that echelon fitness, the people who make the treadmill that I have, get a number of free entries into the virtual runs, and if you're quick enough, you can land one of those. So I've been lucky uh over the summer and now over Christmas to get my virtual runs that way.
SPEAKER_09:Bob, I just thought of a brilliant idea for you. I'm I'm listening. When you finish the final 4K, or wait, is it 3Ks or it's three 4Ks? It's three 4Ks. Okay, 4Ks for Christmas, yeah. All right, when when you finish the last run and and you and you cross your your virtual finish line, you should just like look up at the sky and be like, and tiny Tim who did not die and then finish.
SPEAKER_11:All right, you may have to remind me, but uh yeah, sounds like fun. All right, so that's that happened. I hope if you register, I hope you've either already received your box or you should be getting it pretty soon.
SPEAKER_01:Caution runners, change of topic ahead. Tonight we're excited to shine a spotlight on a unique part of the Run Disney experience, the dead last start. The dead last start is something a lot of runners have heard about but not fully understand. There are plenty of misconceptions out there, and tonight we'll get a chance to clear some of them up, hear firsthand experience, and celebrate the community that has grown around it. So let's welcome Brian to the podcast and tell us all about the dead last start. Brian, welcome. Thank you very much. Glad to be here. What is the dead last start and how does it work at a Disney, run Disneyers or any race?
SPEAKER_08:Okay. First, we didn't completely originate this. There's a lot of races that have this competition of start dead last and see how many people you can pass. Um, it kind of started at Disney back in 2015 Princess Half. Oh. Where uh David Thompson was like, he got tired of people saying, Oh, I can't have a good race because I'm in the last corral. And so he dropped to the last corral and said, I'm I can insist I can have a good race from anywhere. And that's pretty much how it got started. So it started back in 2015. The idea then was simple. You dropped the the very back, and he was running to see how many people he could pass during the race. And that's kind of been the core idea for it from that point on. From that point on, it's matured and changed a lot, but that's sort of the the origin story, if you will, of this rather crazy group of people.
SPEAKER_09:So, Brian, just to get into a little bit more of the terminology of you know, Dead Last Star, you know, DLS, one of the things that I always find really intriguing about your crew post-race is the Facebook posts with these very intricate graphs and dots and lines, and some of the terms that are used in those posts are kills and assassins. So, for our audience, could you just go into a little bit more detail about what a kill and what an assassin is?
SPEAKER_08:First, if those terms don't seem familiar, it's because I made them up as I went along. Um, I'm the guy who does all of those graphs.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So a kill is someone that you started behind and you finished ahead of. There's someone that you passed. An assassin is kind of the flip side of that. An assassin is somebody who started behind you, but then passed you and finished ahead of you at some time during the race. So normally if you're running dead last, there's no one behind you.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:You don't have any assassins, or at best, you've got a few of the other dead last start runners who are your assassins, but you have a lot of kills. If you are running anywhere else, you've got people that you've passed, those are your kills, and people that have passed you, those are your assassins. So that's sort of where those terms came up from. Brian, how are you able to keep track of that? A lot of data analysis and poor use of free time, I think lack of a social life? We can we can bring my wife down here to confirm or deny that. But um so the the basic way I do that is I pull all the race data and then throw it into an Excel spreadsheet. This is not what Excel is built for. This is just the tools I have.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And then I sort that and I've I've built a spreadsheet that if you put in a name and a bib number, it finds that person in the list and calculate automatically calculates who is ahead, who is behind, how many they passed, what percentage of the field that is, and makes those those graphs, those charts that everybody seems to like.
SPEAKER_04:Wow.
SPEAKER_06:So you're not having to go, oh, I passed one, two, three, four. Oh, nope, that first passed.
SPEAKER_08:No. And that's and that's actually how I got involved with this. When David first did it, he looked at his placement. And you know, if it's a race of 10,000 people and you placed 5,000, you think, okay, I passed 5,000 people.
SPEAKER_11:Right.
SPEAKER_08:And I pointed out to him that he actually there were people that he placed ahead of because he was faster that he never saw, you know, that might have started in Corral A and were actually slower than him, but he never caught up to. Oh, I guess you're sure, of course.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So I I point out there was a couple of things that, and he said, Well, fine, figure it out. And so then I had to go figure it out. And that's how we started making the the charts and calculating those numbers. Um, originally they also actually included all of the people that were DNFs, did not finish because you could find that in the data record. And so it's like, yeah, if they didn't finish, we can count them as people you passed.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_11:Reasonable. That's interesting, Brian. That's that it sounds like a lot of work, but that's cool.
SPEAKER_08:It it was a whole lot of work early on. Um, the first time I did it, it was for David and three other people. And then after that, I started saying, if more people start doing this, I can't do this all by hand.
SPEAKER_11:Right.
SPEAKER_08:And so I started automating it. Now it takes, I think the last dead last start group was 80 people, 75 or 80 people starting dead last. And it takes me about two and a half to three hours to make all those charts.
SPEAKER_11:Wow.
SPEAKER_08:It's impressive. It should be automated. There's better ways of doing that. I just haven't bought. Uh and part of it is this way I look at the data and I can see who actually started dead last. Sometimes people were declare themselves dead last and don't start dead last. Um, I can look at it for this started because I would would try to catch course cutters. So I was already looking at the data in great detail. So doing this was sort of an offshoot of it. Interesting.
SPEAKER_06:All right, Brian. So, how does starting last impact pacing, crowding, and the overall race atmosphere for somebody who wants to do it?
SPEAKER_08:There's sort of two answers for that. So for a dead last start runner, starting dead last increases the amount of passing you've got to do. If I'm running a 14-minute mile and I'm starting behind 16-minute milers, I'm overtaking a whole lot of people, particularly early in the race. So for early in the race, fast dead last start runners, there's a lot of congestion. As you proceed through the race, though, you eventually start approaching people that are at your own pace. I mean, ideally, if you eventually hit a point where everyone's running at the same pace as you and you can't pass anymore. And at that point, there is no congestion. It's like any other race where you're just moving along with everybody else. So it's really toughest right initially when things are the most crowded and you are behind people that are maybe, you know, a little bit or significantly slower than you. As far it, the interesting question is what it does to everybody else, because I've had people worried that by us starting dead last, we're causing congestion. And for anybody who's run, do you have to work a lot if somebody's passing you? Or do you have to work a lot if you're trying to pass someone?
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, right. No, the the works for the passer, obviously, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. And it turns out if I'm in, say, Corral C and I drop back, then what ends up happening is there is less passing events for everyone else. There's a whole lot of people that would have passed me had I started in C that will never ever see me because I won't catch up to them. So it actually reduces the crowding for everybody else in a sense. They don't have to pass any of the dead last start folks because a dead last start folk will never be ahead of someone who's faster than them. As in terms of the actual impact on pacing, we've had some people that are elites or near elite status try it. And so I could look at their run, you know, in the princess half the previous year or two and running it dead last. And for somebody who's running like a seven-minute mile or an eight-minute mile, their pace drops probably almost a minute per mile. So a seven-minute miler might end up running their half marathon at an eight, eight thirty minute mile. Um, if you are slower though, it doesn't have a lot of impact. Because again, you you eventually get up to the point where you're not passing any more people. So for me, and I'm on a good day, I'm a 12-minute miler. Um my my PRs are somewhere in the 11 to 12 minute mile. And when I'm running dead last start, I'm usually around a 12 to 13 at best. It slows me down maybe a minute per mile or less. And if you're trying it when you're a 14 or 15 minute miler, there's very little difference at all. You're, you know, you there's some initial congestion, but for the bulk of the race, you're running in pretty clear areas at, you know, with your pace peers, so to speak.
SPEAKER_11:Purely by accident, the very first race I ever did, not a Disney race, this was, and I'm talking back back in the 1980s, okay. I ended up because of the way the buses ran, I ended up doing a dead last start. I had never run a race at all before. But the thing that caught me and really hooked me into recreational running, it was an eight-mile event. I spent eight miles passing people. I felt like a million bucks. You get any of that going on?
SPEAKER_08:Actually, I wouldn't say every race, but probably every other race, somebody PRs while dead last started.
SPEAKER_11:Okay.
SPEAKER_08:Because if if I'm running for my PR, I'm looking at my watch and I'm watching my time. If I'm running dead last, I'm looking at the person ahead of me. I'm like, where do I? You start looking for holes. You start looking for can I pass this person or this group? How do I do that safely? It is actually, I'm more tired mentally if I'm running dead last and trying for kills than I do in any other normal race. But physically it keeps your focus there. And I agree with you. I feel I feel much, much better dead last starting almost any race. Come on, buddy, follow me. You can do it. Come on, slap them on the back. Let's go. Yeah. And it's a it's a real thing with almost everybody. If you look at the people that are back there, we're all great friends because we're seeing each other every race. That's good. An awful lot of people that once they do this once, they're like, why would I want to fight my way through the corral again? You know, it's I've done that where I'm trying to get to the front of the corral, and that's stressful. And I'm trying not to annoy people. And as the corral's shifting forward, where do I move? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very true. Now, even people who have dead last started, they're like, Yeah, I'm gonna start my corral, but I'm just gonna hang in the back. Because it's clear, you know, there's not that stress.
SPEAKER_11:You think the Run Disney community has any misconceptions about the dead last start runners? It's gotten better.
SPEAKER_08:So there were certainly some significant misconceptions early on. Probably the biggest one was we were mean and making fun of people. Yeah. I and you know, admittedly, some of the language is like, yeah, we're gonna see how many people we can pass and we're gonna call them kills. If you're not if you haven't met us, that sounds pretty aggressive. Yeah, true. Um, but when you meet the people that are doing that and look at what they're doing, it's not that aggressive. And in fact, before every one of these uh uh races, we give what we call the talk. And two of the things that are really important in the talk are first, if you start dead last, you have ceded rights to that course to every other runner on the course. Um you know, we are responsible for every pass we're doing to make it safe, convenient. And the other thing we say is you should be a ghost. You know, people you shouldn't be blasting through. People shouldn't realize that you're actually doing what you're doing. Now, admittedly, we quite often run do things like run around in cheerleader costumes that say Dead Last Start on them.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, low low profile stuff.
SPEAKER_08:Very subtle, yeah. But as far as the behavior goes, that's the idea is to not cause any impact. I like that. Um, and and once I think once people saw us interacting more online and saw that coming out, a good bit of that, not all of it, but a good bit of that faded away. The other thing is if you're in the back of the pack and you're struggling, a dead last start runner is probably exactly who you want with you. We have had people dead last start, and uh I think almost all of us have done it at one point or another, where we're passing somebody who's just they're on their last legs, and it you know, it might be at mile two. And the stress is off for us. You know, we've we've been back here before, and so you're just kicking into low gear, walk with that person, say, How you doing? What do you need? Chat with them. Um, we've had only in all the time we've done this, there's only two people who have dead last started who have been swept. One of them self-swept so that she could stay with a complete stranger that she friended on the course. That person was not gonna make it. She said, I'm not letting you step on that bus alone. That's cool. Yeah. So there's there's an awful lot of there's people that do this just for the kills. How many people can I pass? And there's people that are doing it for I'd like to be in the back and help out some people that could really use it at that point. And there's people that do it in the back just because I am just gonna have the time of my life having shenanigans in the back of the pack. Very good. And there's a lot of that.
SPEAKER_11:Very good, Brian.
SPEAKER_09:I want to turn the conversation to another group that is well known to be at the back of the pack, and that is our wonderful friends, the balloon ladies. How does the presence of the balloon ladies affect the mindset of a DLS runner?
SPEAKER_08:That depends a whole lot on whether they've done it or not before. So, for a lot of us who have done this, it's it's they're good friends. They're people that you know, they're people that are back there. You guys know this, and a lot of your listeners do. They're some of the nicest people on the absolutely.
SPEAKER_09:They are really amazing.
SPEAKER_08:Yep, that they're amazing people, and they're amazing runners and athletes to do what they do. If you really want a hard experience, try pacing a Disney race at a flat-out 16-minute mile. It's not an easy task. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_11:A lot of work, a lot of practice.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, it's a lot of work, and it's very different than running. So, for those of us who have done this, they are one of the highlights just getting to meet and interact with them and sometimes camp out and run with them. Um for wine and dine, I actually ended up joining them and just hanging with them for probably three or four miles. And I'll I've done that some before, and I'll do that in the future. It's a lot of fun. Now, the flip side of that is if you've never done it, even if you've heard all the stories about they're perfectly nice people, it's scary to see them being the only people behind you. Um and and the first time, you know, you've been taught if I see these people, it's a problem. It's I I have an issue. So even at the start where that's not an issue. There's a good bit of nerves that come from meeting them for the first time and knowing that they are starting right behind you. Um, most of the time when somebody is first trying to dead last start, they'll do it on like a uh 10K. Because you, you know, there's a little bit less pressure there for most people. And they will then join us in the back and start near the the front of the dead last start mini corral, as we call it, corral V. Um so from there, they're not usually seeing them, but occasionally I have people that hang all the way back and just they're like, are those are they right behind me? I'm like, they're right behind you. If you do a 15-minute mile, you'll never see them again. They're okay.
SPEAKER_11:Well, that's that's right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And technically you start right in front of them, not behind them, correct?
SPEAKER_08:We we do not start behind them. And there's a there's a couple of reasons for that. The main one is we in no way want to interfere with what Run Disney and they are doing. Um the other one is early on with a bunch of competitive people, you'd have dead last start runners seeing what other dead last start runners they could start behind.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So when I built the spreadsheet that generates that chart, automatically a dead last start declared runner cannot be a target. So we don't have people fighting to be the dead last of the deadline.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, right. The dead lunster.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. Um, but yeah, we usually start ahead of them. Not everybody sees this, but usually what happens is they start with us, and then they're actually held at the start line briefly.
SPEAKER_11:Yep. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08:So that they can synchronize watches with the folks on the bikes and all that. Um, a couple of times I've been the very last person and had the experience of looking back and just seeing Molly and Nancy and everybody standing under the start line with 101 bikes, just sort of looking at their watches, which is kind of weird.
SPEAKER_09:Brian, what one other group that I you know just popped in my head that I wanted to discuss your interactions with, and that is the race announcing team. You know, John, Carissa, Riley, Tracy, and and everybody else. What's it like being at the start line and it's just DLS, the balloon ladies, and the race announcers? Well, what's that vibe like?
SPEAKER_08:The vibe, it doesn't. They're still race announcers, and they're still very good at doing their jobs and staying on on target with Disney. On the other hand, they know we're back there, they know we're crazy, they know that pretty much they can laugh at us, tease us, do whatever they want. So it tends to be a much looser vibe. Um, we so early on, if if we're doing something that isn't working for Run Disney, we will find out about it one way or another. And there have been some interesting ways we found out. One of them early on was people were going pew, like in Star Wars. We are familiar with this. Yeah. Um they we were only doing that to people we knew, but if you're oxygen deprived at mile 12 and somebody goes pew pew next to you, you may not know who it's directed at. And so we were told you you cannot do that. And we're fine. That's in the little talk, that's one of the things we don't do. When we ran in cheerleader costumes, I decided it would be best to put pew pew on my butt on the compression under it. So as we would run by, if somebody said, you know, oh, dead last starred and was teasing us, I could flip skirts at them and pew. I actually did that to the race announcers this last race just for grins. I'm pretty sure that's not something I should do in the middle of the pack or at the start of the pack, but at the back of the pack, it's like, okay, we're yeah, we all know what's going on here. Gotcha. They're they really seem to enjoy what we're doing, at least partially because they always know where to find us and when.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And so, you know, if if if one of us has had a baby, which happened recently, or you know, we've done something odd or special for charity or whatever, they know that and they know when to call it out because we're right there, which works really well.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, but the bummer is if if Riley calls you over to talk about it, there's nobody to hear it.
SPEAKER_08:No, that's that's true. We've actually so some of our members are fast. They're corral A B runners. Yeah, right. And when we've really needed to get something there to to sort of, this is something you should hype, they go and into their corral, they get up there, they find Riley, they say, Hey Riley, here's the message. And then they leave and they wait another 40 or 50 minutes to actually dead last start. Very cool. So yeah, there's there's those sort of interactions too. Good stuff, yeah. And a lot of the um, even the the staff that just mans the corrals and that sort of thing ends up interacting with us the same way because they're used to us hanging back there.
SPEAKER_01:That's a good hang, too. Like almost a good, like in some of these races, a good hour almost a good way.
SPEAKER_08:It's at least an hour. Um, in fact, once you've done this a few times, I think that's the hardest part. Uh, last marathon weekend when we had just miserable weather, you're out there, you're literally you're watching people start for an hour. You know, you've been standing around, anyways, for an hour, and then you're watching people start for another hour as a sideways sleeting rain is hitting you.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, but nasty, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:And you're like, you know, this this was just not in the the cards. This was not something I planned on.
SPEAKER_11:Whoever thought this was a good idea.
SPEAKER_08:And that that conversation comes up repeatedly. If you actually need to find us on race day, we're really easy to find because as everybody else is panicking, half of us are laying down on the pavement, sleeping, or just just chatting, just laying down. Because it's like, yeah, you got it, we got a good hour. I'm I could use another 30-minute nap. That's fine.
SPEAKER_01:Anytime you guys say, you know what? I'm cold. I just want to get out of here. I'm just getting back into the next corral that I can just start and starting off. I mean, that kind of thing ever go down. I don't, I don't know that anybody's ever done that.
SPEAKER_08:There have been people that have said, I want a dead last start, and it was a little too much for them, and they they went to their corrals. That happens repeatedly, and that's fine. You know, this is the the main point of this is it's a personal challenge. This is not necessarily for kills or any of that. It's can you sacrifice your corral, decide to run your race, you know, not have it determined by anybody else, and make that risk. For most people, the idea of starting dead last is terrifying. And so there's there's plenty of people that have said, this is a little too much for me right now. And we're like, absolutely, go go go back to your corral when you're ready for this. If you want to do this, that's fine. But there's there's no reason to force any of it. I mean, this is for fun. We do have people that have been known to sleep in their car and set their watch alarm for like 540 because 20 minutes is more than enough to get from their car to the starting corral. You're dead last, anyways. So we usually try to take a group picture, and I can tell you every group picture I've ever taken, there's always one or two people that I'm like, uh no, Monica's not here yet. She will, anyways.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, that's the only other dead last starter I know pretty well. Monica.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. And she is uh she is almost always the last because she drives, she's got the car. She's like, nah, it's cool. She's gonna sleep in the car.
SPEAKER_11:And and and she'd be an acre out person normally, anyway.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah, uh the only race that I have ever I have ever beat her, she was five and a half months pregnant. Oh, yeah. I'm pretty certain that's the only way I will ever beat her unless I tie her legs together or something.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She uh she is known for us for giving birth to hashtag dopey baby like three weeks after running dopey for crying out loud. Very impressive.
SPEAKER_01:Starting Dead Last, you've probably got a lot of cool stories. What's one memorable story or moment from Dead Last Starting that captures the spirit of the group or a special time for you?
SPEAKER_08:There have been at this point somewhere close to 300 different individuals who have run Dead Last Start. And I know this because we have them declare so that we're all publicly responsible for our behavior. And if you declare, I've actually got all of those listed. Of those 300 some people, I'll bet you there's 600 plus really interesting stories. Um, for me, David did this in 2015. I started doing the numbers in 2017, but due to running with my wife or my family or something like that, I didn't get a chance to do this until relatively late. I think I want to say it was 2019 or 2018. No, it was later than that. It was just after COVID. I ran Wine and Dine, and it was the last wine and dine that was out on the highway, that we started out on the highway. Um, and I was just like any other DLS newbie. It was exciting and it was scary. And I remember David told me to turn around and he took a picture of me right as the fireworks were going off. And the pictures, the picture's fantastic because you can just see four people in back. You know it's the last corral, the fireworks are going off. My face is alight with excitement. What's not shown in that picture is when I turned around, I was looking back at David and the balloon ladies, and nothing.
SPEAKER_02:Nobody, yeah.
SPEAKER_08:The entire highway behind me was empty. There were not even the tracking vehicles out on it yet. And this was before they rolled um medical right behind us. So the medical would usually come in from the side there. It was terrifying. Kind of eerie, huh? Just staring into the dark. It's really eerie. And you still get that eerie feeling because you you always see those crowds with people in them, or you're rushing to get in them if you're the very first. And so that all on its own was just eerie and set the tone for the rest of that race. Um, other notable events, as much as I've run Run Disney, I never stopped for a character photo before I started running dead last. I'd be running for time, or I'd be running with a friend who needed time, and I'd I'd look at the lines, I'm like, I don't think I'll do that. You know, I I it wasn't a big deal for me. Running dead last, I started doing it, and now if I'm dead last, I'm hanging the back, I'll do it all the time. That was uh an eye-opener for me. Um, we we did have a tendency to have very large groups get into those photos, and we've reduced that sum because it's it was calling undue attention. But I've got to say it actually worked really well because ordinarily you'd have 20 people all trying to get pictures in ones and twos. And instead it was 20 people, one picture, we're gone.
SPEAKER_11:Right, right. We've done that too, uh Brian.
SPEAKER_08:But the best part of that was one race I was hanging so far back that we were getting our picture taken, and one of our friends on the bikes was saying, the balloon ladies are here, you must go. And and we follow their directions. So we're all ready to go off, and all of a sudden I hear this scream, don't move. And we look back, and the balloon ladies are sprinting up to sprint into the picture. We all pose for one moment. How about that? And then sprint off. That's awesome. So those are some of those experiences. You could go on with a lot of others. Of I've helped a lot of people on course, and a lot of my friends have helped a lot of people on course. And those are the moments that, if you've done this multiple times, are probably more special. The fact that you can support somebody else in this way, it you can do that any race. I don't want to say that's in any way unique to dead last, but something about running dead last takes that pressure off and makes it a lot easier to say, I can I can do this for this other person.
SPEAKER_11:Neat. Good stories. Brian, does the dead last start group ever get involved in charity fundraising as a group?
SPEAKER_08:Initially, we didn't. Initially, it was it was very individual and running for kills or something like that. Over time, we've gone more and more towards charity. A lot of the people doing this were already charity runners with Disney. Um, and so that kind of brought in that element of it. We've done the the numbers that I run make it very easy to have a metric for charity. So we have people that say, for every dead last start runner that passes me, I'll pledge ten dollars to the the charity of their choice or the charity of the race or something like that. We have a lot of dead last start runners that say they will pay a dollar per pass or five dollars per percentage point passed, or something like that. So a lot of those sort of things have happened where it's individuals or a few doing it. Um we have started to do more organized uh uh charities. Probably the first major one was one of the balloon ladies lost her son. Oh right, yes, and asked that you know donations be made to a charity. Well, we're back there with these people all the time. I I mean, Heather, I consider a good friend, and so we said, okay, we can do this and we can leverage our visibility. And so we said, we are running for Trevor. And it was DLS for Trevor. A lot of us still run with wristbands or buttons or that sort of thing that had those on there. And we raised, oh, I I have this written down and I don't have it off the top of my head. I want to say we raised something like$10,000 or$12,000. That's wonderful over a period of like a week. I mean, it was one of these things that once you start saying we're doing this and we're doing this for people we know, and we're doing this as a group, that snowballed very rapidly. Um so we did that. We most recently one of our members said, Hey, let's uh run Chicago, the Chicago Marathon for the American Cancer Society. And we kind of plutted them. They their teams are usually 10 to 20 people. I think the largest team they'd had was 30. And we ended up coming in with a team that by the end of it was 95 people. We ended up raising oh, it was over 170. I want to say it was 188,000. And most of us were not huge fundraisers. I mean, this was a lot of people egging each other on and working towards it. Um, the American Cancer Society said if you hit$170,000, you can name a grant. You get to define the name of the grant. With a group with this many poor life choices, that was an amazingly bad idea. We still haven't named the grant, but the suggestions we've come up are grantee McGrantface and the grant. And so I don't know if they knew exactly what they were getting into there, but that was definitely a high point. And this group, I'm sure, will continue to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's like your other name, right? The villains, right? Is that yeah.
SPEAKER_08:The game is the dead last start game. Um, we tend to call ourselves the villains, and I think that's partly because we got such a a reputation early on, but we kind of embraced it. And at this point, villains is a badge of honor. I mean, it's Disney.
SPEAKER_01:We love the Disney villains anymore. Absolutely. Talking about fundraising, uh, there was one special event or interesting event you guys did for fundraising back, I forget what race it was.
SPEAKER_09:It was the uh Monsters Inc. 10K from Springtime, I think 2023, I think.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, oh, that one. It was a great idea.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:In theory.
SPEAKER_08:It it was. So for anyone listening who doesn't know what we're talking about, we organized what we called the 2319 game. And I've got to admit, this was suggested by someone who had not even done Dead Last Start. This was just someone who's familiar with this and said, wouldn't this be a fun idea? And the idea was initially, anybody could pin a sock to the back of their shirt. And we, as Dead Last Start runners, would run up and see how many socks we could collect. Um, this rapidly morphed into a charity thing because we said, What are we going to do with all these socks? And it turns out there are some charities that will accept socks, not even pairs, mismatched single socks. Um, and so we set up some rules, and the rules were any dead last start player could do this. If you've got a sock pinned to the back of your shoulder, like in Monsters Inc., the dead last start runner could run up and say 2319 to you. And if you were part of the game, you'd hand them a sock, and then we would see who'd collected the most socks by the end. Um, and we set all this up. We were insanely public about it. Um, I recall, yeah. Yeah, we we were trying to get people involved because a lot of people at that point knew what we were doing and wanted to be involved even though they didn't want to actually start dead last. And so we had a lot of people do this. We actually had people buy, once we said that the socks were going to charity, we had some people buy like big bags of 20 pairs of socks and not even take them out on the course. Just say, we'll we'll give them to you at the end, we'll donate them. Um, people were dressed as the child protection agency costumes. They had their own yellow backpacks that said CDA on them and and all of that. And so they they took off running, and I was not there. I was at home, what we call narrating the race. So I'll try to watch everybody on the tracker and kind of do a text play by play of where people are, who they're passing, what's going on. And so I'm narrating the race. They're doing this, they're collecting socks, they're having a blast. So somewhere during this process, someone in Run Disney decided this wasn't a good idea. And the likely reason is it involved exchanging things between runners on the course. Which that can be an issue. You know, we'd said there's no touching. They have to you have to ask them and they have to hand you a sock and all that. Um, so we tried to make this as transparent as possible, but somebody somewhere said this is not gonna fly. And we had one of our group members, um, Jack, decided he would help by collecting everything at the end. And he was collecting all the socks, and all of a sudden, security came over and hello friended him and said, Um, you know, what are you doing, etc.? And had somebody come out, not security, but someone higher up, and say, You can't do this. We can't allow you to do this. This is absolutely not allowed, etc. And really got quite upset at him. And and he and the rest of us were appalled by this. The last thing we had wanted was to cause an issue for Run Disney. Sure. And in fact, had through various back channels, had tried to tell him, Look, if you haven't noticed online, this is what we're doing, and and hadn't heard anything about it. So probably somewhere in that was just a miscommunication, but it ended up being a very exciting thing to watch from the uh comfort of my own basement as I've been up since 3 a.m. narrating this, and I'm now as sleep-deprived as the runners. And one of my friends appears to be about to be arrested and trespassed off Disney property. Um, nothing came of it. We were able to donate the socks. It's a fantastic game that unfortunately will never, ever, ever occur again. Um one of our one of our basic rules is if it's causing a problem for Run Disney, we're we're only doing this at their grace. I mean, it's their race, their structure. So, yeah, that's probably not going to happen again. But it was a truly unique and very entertaining thing, even to watch from a distance.
SPEAKER_09:Hey Brian, I want to come back to the data for a second because again, I I love looking at your your charts and your posts uh within Facebook. And obviously, you being the guy sitting in your basement crunching all these numbers and using automations and such, what patterns have you noticed from looking at the DLS data and comparing your data to the corral system in its present form? Have you noticed any trends or patterns there?
SPEAKER_08:There's a there's a lot that's gone on over the more than a decade that I've been following the data. Um part of that is comparing Disney races to each other, and part of it's comparing Disney races to other races. So I'll also get data from Chicago or Boston or something like that. Um there's some interesting things we've uncovered. For instance, amongst the Disney races, if you want to DLS and get a good kill count, you know, be able to pass the most, you should do that in the marathon because you have the most chance to catch. And nobody wants to do it in the marathon because it is brutal. I've done that uh two times so far. Um, and the other one is you do it at Princess. Princess, we call our Super Bowl of DLS because of all of the Disney races, the princess half is actually measurably slightly slower than any of the other halves. The only one that was ever close was uh Tinkerbell on the West Coast, which had a profile very similar to that. So we've noticed that. I will say that the other fun thing I have looking at is are the corrals sorted? Uh meaning, do you really have front fast people starting in front? And for the most part, corrals A, B, and C are sorted. And then you get into the the mass unwashed hordes of the rest of us, right? And I have never found any sorting there whatsoever. No, I I and I can understand that.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. I think it's pretty at that point, it becomes pretty random because there's no proofs of time after that.
SPEAKER_08:So and the other thing is I get people that are saying, well, there's no proof of time, so everybody's put in their fastest time. And there's some truth to that. But the other thing that's really obvious, even in the people who have proof of time, is Disney races are weird because everybody's stopping for pictures. Oh, yeah. We're stopping for pictures, we're stopping for pretzels, yeah. You know, all sorts of things. When you take that into account, it really scrambles a race. So when you compare these races to others, they don't look the same in the data. And and part of that isn't the runners, it's the experiences we can we can invoke on the course.
SPEAKER_11:100%. Yep. Totally understandable. I'm fond of saying all my PRs are set at Disney. My slow is 5k, my slow is 10k, all set at Disney. Because that's we're there for fun.
SPEAKER_08:Yeah. I've uh there's people that say, you know, never go for your PR at Disney. And there's actually people that Boston qualify at Disney. It's it's a good thing, these are good races to go fast, but they're also good races to go slow. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. This comes back to you know, part of DLS is run your race, not somebody else's, and and don't worry about somebody else's. We've all got different reasons for doing this. There's a there's maybe we'll come back and and do a deep dive on data and things you can find in the race. Um, not related to DLS, but just related to the data. We've seen things like people running backwards in time. That actually happened in a couple of Disney races where runners actually hit the 15k mat before they hit the 5k mat. That's yeah, if if things aren't set up quite right, you do get some weird things like that and they stick out very clearly in the data.
SPEAKER_11:That's skill. Well, you know, we've talked about a bunch. Now, I think some of our friends are going to go, hmm, I might like to give that a try. So, what kind of advice would you impart to folks who are thinking about trying to join the dead last start crew? Hmm.
SPEAKER_08:Okay. First, if you want to do this, make sure you're doing it for your own reasons. So if you're doing it because everybody else is doing it, I don't think that's a good reason. If you're doing it because you've done a bunch of races and you say, this sounds like a unique challenge that I never even considered, that's why I started doing it. Um, it was something new and it's something I found I've enjoyed, but it was a new challenge. It was stepping outside my comfort zone. It was throwing off that security blanket of I'm in my corral and I've got my place, and saying I can accept whatever this race hands me, even to the point of starting dead last. I think that's a good place to start on asking yourself if you should do it or why you should do it.
SPEAKER_11:And what should folks expect? What kind of you've talked about some rules that you've had before. What should folks expect? What kind of behavior would be expected of people dead last starting?
SPEAKER_08:The the number one behavior is sort of the rule I mentioned before is we cede the course to everyone else ahead of us. Um if you're if you're giving up your Quran dropping back, everyone else has prior right of way on that course. Um usually when we give this talk, there's a bunch of parts to it. But one of it is, yeah, you're seeding the course to everyone else. Um another is be like a ghost. We've mentioned those two. A third that we often mention is keep in mind that everything that we're doing has an expiration date. There will be a time that I am not running a race. In fact, there will be a time that I DNF a race. If I if I decide to keep running, that will happen. It's not an if, it's a do this long enough, it'll happen. So you've got to kind of accept those sort of things. Um, as far as other things that that you want to consider when you're doing this, you do have a lot of congestion back there at the very beginning. For some of us, we get around that by just going with the flow for a while until it opens up. Some people, and I'm one of those people because I I tend to like trail running, will just get off onto the grass and run the grass beside the trail. So if you see if you see a bunch of people passing on the grass, they're not trying to make fun of anybody or anything else. They're just trying to get out of everybody else's way. Um, and that's something we we tell people. Another thing we tell them is when you do get pinned in, just walk it. There's, you know, and and this really should go for probably everybody from, yeah. Um, if you're running that section along the Epcot resorts where you are just hemmed in, hey, that's a really good place to just do a fast walk because there's nothing else you can do. Get frustrated about it all you want. It's not going to improve your pace, it's not going to improve the experience for you or anyone around you. So you you kind of just have to accept that and go with it.
SPEAKER_11:Be patient.
SPEAKER_08:And as far as actually doing this on the day, I haven't made as many public declarations lately. I've I've just been busy. But the basic idea is you show up at the back and you listen to sort of the the culture of please don't screw this up for anyone else. Again, it's it's all at Run Disney's graces. Um and we'll usually give a talk back there and quite often a group picture, and then everybody takes off. Some of us are running solo, some of us are running in groups, some of us are running in clothing that we've picked up. Uh, we've got a tradition now of corral thrifting that occasionally occurs. Yeah, right. I've done some good stuff. You'd be amazed what people have. Oh, I believe you, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_10:Good stuff.
SPEAKER_08:Um, and then I think probably the biggest one that I tend to emphasize is that there's an expiration date. We've had uh about 300 people do this. Uh, I know personally of at least three people that have done this with us that simply aren't here anymore. Um we have had uh some people like Amanda who has significant health issues, and she decided to do it with us. She was scared and nervous, did a 10K, said this was so fantastic, I'm gonna do the half the next day. But she'd be the first to tell you, you do what you you take advantage of what you've got when you've got it. Um David, the guy who started this, has had a lot of issues with arthritis, and he doesn't run anymore. He's transitioned over to hand cycle, and he is phenomenal at it. Um, but he's another good example of he's the one that started this. He's like, I know at some point there's a race that I won't finish. I know at some point there's a last time I get to do this. I will take advantage of every aspect I get and and kind of not worry about what could have been, but enjoy what I've got.
SPEAKER_11:That's great. That's uh Brian, I think we're gonna drop the mic on that. Well done. My friend, thank you so much for joining us. We you we learned a lot and we had a good time talking with you.
SPEAKER_01:If you do want to dead last start, where can they find you? I know you guys are outside, usually outside the last corral.
SPEAKER_08:So the the there's two parts to this. The first part is find us. Usually we're outside of the last corral. We don't usually go inside until we have to, so that we're not interfering with other runners. So if you go to Corral G right now um and look outside, you will see a bunch of people that look kind of like bums sitting on the table. They don't look like they're ready to run anywhere because they know they've still got plenty of time. Come on over, introduce yourself, and say hi. It is an amazingly friendly group. Um, if you don't know who to talk to there, find find somebody you know that's in that group and ask them for an introduction. But we're all friendly. Um, meet up with us there. We'll give a little talk to anybody who's new to it and bring you into it. The only other thing that we usually strongly suggest is I will either put out a declaration thread on Run Disney Run or something similar, or I'll have people contact me, or if I'm there, I'll take a picture of your bib. And the reason is we like to have everybody who dead last starts be publicly acknowledging they're doing that. It's our way of saying to Run Disney and to others, we accept what we're doing. We're gonna remain accountable. We're doing this publicly. For anyone who's really worried, we also always have some people that for various important reasons don't want to reveal that information. And that's fine. I also keep that private. You still get your charts. The DLS runners are insane about charts. I have people that are literally asking me for their charts before the last runners have finished. I'm like, gotta give me a little bit of time. Relax. Yeah. I would say the other thing to mention uh with the range of people that have done this, we have had people that have scored 0% of the field. They have started dead last and they have finished just ahead the balloon ladies, and and simply due to that's the pace they're at. They accepted that risk at a 16-minute mile. We have also had runners that have passed more than 93% of the field. Boy, that's tough. Yes, starting an hour after the corral A, and they pass 93% of the field. So if you think you are too slow or too fast for this, you're wrong in every case. It is every pace possibly imaginable.
SPEAKER_11:Wow. Hey, it's it really has, I said a couple minutes ago, it really has been fun. And I want to thank you for taking the time to join us and tell us all about it. I don't know that I don't know that the gang here will be joining you, but we will be looking for you at the next one.
SPEAKER_08:You guys know where to find me.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, man.
SPEAKER_08:Come on back and say hi. I'll be back there marathon weekend. Brian, thanks so much. Thank you very much. This has been great.
SPEAKER_09:Caution runners, the topic is about to change right now.
SPEAKER_11:I learned a lot talking with Brian. I knew there was a DLS group, but I didn't realize the level to which it was organized, structured, and the way they set their goals. I think that's I think that's great. I think it was very interesting. And hey, maybe it's something you want to give a try. I probably won't, but it's something you might want to give a try. All right. Let us see, my friends. Uh looking at what's coming up. This is a Zoom Thursday. This week, December 4th, and in two weeks from now, December 18th. We'll be on Zoom. I will be there to start it. I may, I've got guests coming, so I may not be around much this Thursday, but it's okay. You can you can talk amongst yourselves. John will give you a topic. Okay. Coming up next week, a couple rise and run friends drop by to talk with us about running dopey. And now please stand clear of the door. It's time for a race report. A race report sponsored by Thomas Stokes, Stokes Metabolic Training. Stokes.fit slash rise and run coaching is the site. Check out what Thom's got going on. There's a link pinned to the featured section of our Facebook group page. I know Tom's been doing a bunch. I've been uh AWOL, but just a lot of things going on, but it's a wonderful program. Great guy, lots, very, very helpful. Check him out, gang. All right, now, friends, of course, normally I take the race report, we take the race report in chronological order, but we've got so many turkey trots that we are going to get to. However, we've invited a friend to join us for the race report spotlight. Her event took place on Saturday, and I think I want to lead in with this one right now because while most of us were eating turkey this weekend, our buddy Divya was eating tacos. Hi, Diviya. How are you?
SPEAKER_07:Good, how are you? Thanks for uh having me.
SPEAKER_11:Wonderful. We're happy that you're here. You, my friend, participated in a most unusual event in Washington, D.C., the Taco Bell 50K. Um, I'm going to no, I'm not going to. I'm going to do what I usually do. I'm going to start on the race report spotlight and ask you, Divi, how did you get started eating tacos? No, no, no. How did you get started? How did you get started with running?
SPEAKER_07:Well, the t the tacos came from childhood, but the uh the running um actually run Disney. Um my first ever race was the uh half marathon at uh marathon weekend in uh I think I was not a runner and I just like heard about it. I told one of my friends who was a runner here, hey, I like really want to do this. Um and so I did that. I was not well trained for that, so it was kind of a bit of a disaster. But it was and then um I uh you know got more into it after that, and then a couple years later I decided my New Year's resolution would be to run at least a mile every day for a year, and I kept that much and spiraled into now running uh 50Ks with Taco Bell.
SPEAKER_11:So 50Ks with Taco Bill. Well, this is an interesting event. We would love to hear tell us all about it, please.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so um it was like modeled after I don't know if you guys saw a few months ago, Denver had put on uh Taco Bell 50K. I think they did, yeah. Um, and so some folks in uh the DC area saw it and thought that it'd be really cool to have in the DC area. Basically, the way it's set up is um we had nine Taco Bell stomps. Uh, the first and the last Taco Bell were the same, but it started in uh Northern Virginia, and you'd go from Northern Virginia to DC and then back into northern Virginia. You were to run to each Taco Bell, um, and at each stump you had to eat some sort of Taco Bell food. Uh drinks ain't counts, like the blast alone would not count as a food item. And um we Had to buy stop four, eat either a crunch wrap or a chalupa, and by stop number I think eight, have either a Nacho's Bel Grande or a burrito supreme. Um, and other than that, there were no real rules, it was like about a 50k course, but you could kind of take whatever route you needed to to get there. Uh, it was a lot of fun, definitely the most ridiculous race I'd ever done.
SPEAKER_09:Divi, that was a question I was just about ready to ask. You know, looking on the website of this race, as you just aforementioned, there was no official route to this, so you got there like on your own. Now, apparently the race organizers did have a like GPS file that could get like loaded onto your watch. How did you navigate? Did you use that file for your watch or did you just follow the pack or or how did you go about it?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so I uh I don't have a Garmin, so the GPS file did not load onto my watch. But um, I was I like happened to join a group of other runners um who were doing like a run walk interval. So I went with them. They also, I don't think, had a Garmin, so they used Apple Maps, which got us a little bit lost, so we got a little bit off course at one point. Um, but we managed to make it. Um, so we just used Apple Maps to get there.
SPEAKER_06:How many of there were you out there doing this?
SPEAKER_07:So I think 500 runners total uh started the race, and I was surprised like 429 of them finished, which I was expecting it to be much less. So that was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_09:But wow, I gotta say, I I love the rules. You know, you already went by you know the menu items that you know you had to eat, but by certain points. But like I I just want to highlight some of these other rules here. No on-course Pepto, Alka Seltzer, Pepsid, or Milanta will be allowed. Exactly. How do they police this?
SPEAKER_07:I think it was all it was all honor system. Okay, a little bit like eating them was on our system as well, but yeah, right.
SPEAKER_06:Are the Taco Bell locations informed ahead of time? Like that's a lot of people coming into the stores to get um items to eat. So I would think they like get bombarded. Are they are they told ahead of time?
SPEAKER_07:I had actually asked them about that ahead of time to make sure um they did inform all of the managers before me. I think the organizers like did a trial run where they did the 50k course and just told them all then. Uh and the Taco employees were super like enthusiastic about it. The ones at the first one were like cheering us on and clapping us on, and then at the second stop, they had like put out extra cups of water, and when the manager was walking around encouraging everyone to hydrate, so they were all like very lovely.
SPEAKER_09:Now we know you're an excellent runner, and and we know you absolutely crushed this. I but I feel bad, but but this is such a unique event that I want to ask more Taco Bell questions than I want to do running questions. So tell our listeners the strategy here. Did you is it a situation where as you approached a Taco Bell, you went inside and you ordered the old-fashioned way? Or was there strategy involved to maybe help save time? And like maybe as you were running, you were like, I don't know, like using like a Taco Bell app or something like that, and placing like a mobile order so that by the time you got there, your your item was ready to go, you could quickly eat it and get back on the road. How did you handle the ordering of everything?
SPEAKER_07:So I did a bit of both. Um, some of them were a little bit less busy, so I just ordered there, and some of them, like while I was eating the Taco Bell, I mumble ordered for the one next to it. Um, and then they had actually advised us for like the first couple Taco Bells to order stuff the night before and bring it in, just because otherwise 500 people would have been ordering at the same time.
SPEAKER_04:Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_07:So I did that. Although I I ended up actually just being able to order there because it wasn't as busy as I thought it would be. But yeah, kind of a combination of strategies.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. You know, I was picturing Greg, I was picturing like a group of 10 runners running up to the uh drive-thru. The drive-thru, yeah, yeah, exactly. And and then you had to offer proof at the end of what you did, right?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so we had to save all of our wrappers and receipts and then turn them in at the end and they had to count them and we'd eaten everything.
SPEAKER_01:So how far apart were these taco bells that like, okay, let me say I gotta get a crunch wrap right now, because then I that would fall me over till you know, and then I could go quickly with some uh were those cinnamon bites or whatever they were, so I can not have to get too full. Is there that kind of strategy going on?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, I kind of did a bit of that strategy. Um the earlier ones were farther apart, um, like the ones in River Virginia. I think the first and the second were like over seven miles apart, and then there was like a five mile one, and then the ones in DC itself were like really close, they were like a mile or two apart. And then I think the last one was like nine miles away or something to go back to.
SPEAKER_01:And now, did you guys sit down and eat in the restaurant, or did you just like on the go? It's chopping down the crunch wrap, or you know, I don't know. It's it's six, six, you know, taco bits flying everywhere. Yeah.
SPEAKER_07:The role was you had to actually eat uh in the restaurant itself. You couldn't have it while running. Um, so yeah, we mostly ate like sometimes we were standing and just scarfing it down, but we just eat there and then keep going.
SPEAKER_01:This is fun. This is sounds like a fun idea.
SPEAKER_06:So Taco Bell is actually one of my favorite things to have post-race. Um but how was the experience actually like eating it during? Because I know doing I've never done an ultra, but I know others that have done ultras, and you eat an assortment of things, and I would think that there's a decent amount of protein and and stuff um as you're eating it. I know you said you ate a lot of the cinnamon's, um, which is a lot of carbs, but how was the experience eating it and then having to run all those miles?
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, so I was nervous about that. So the weekend before I trialed it by eating a crunch wrap and then doing my like five miles with a magic mile. Um, and so I knew it would kind of work. That's great. So yeah, and then you know, I ate the like hard stuff early on because I was worried about that. So it was okay. Like the Borina Supreme made me a little nauseous, but everything else was okay.
SPEAKER_11:Um yeah, I can only imagine Alicia that she finished and then went to McDonald's.
SPEAKER_09:Last couple of quick hitting questions here to to wrap up this amazing spotlight. Um, my first question is uh by any point in the race, were you sweating Baja Blast?
SPEAKER_07:I had Baja Blast like once in the middle and nowhere else. So sadly, I was not like a Gatorade at sweating Baja Blast.
SPEAKER_09:Okay. Uh second, we'll get back to running now. Exactly how long did it take you to complete the Taco Bell DC 50K?
SPEAKER_07:So because we got lost and took a few extra stops, it took me like uh 10 hours and 48 minutes. The time moment was 11 hours. So you got a long time to do it.
SPEAKER_09:Well, listen, you completed the challenge and that's all that matters. Uh, and then the last and final question is have you had Taco Bell since? And if not, when do you think you'll go back?
SPEAKER_07:I have not, but yesterday I was actually like, you know, I could really go for some Taco Bell. So tomorrow we'll see.
SPEAKER_01:You know, there's one coming down the street by me soon, so I'm gonna have to you know try that as a fueling station.
SPEAKER_07:It was the cinnamon bites are like really good fuel, so I might recommend it.
SPEAKER_01:I just I just want to know the guy that kind of check everything. Okay, oh, that's not the right wrapper.
SPEAKER_09:All right, Divi. Well, congratulations on uh going your queero taco bell on uh uh on this one and really crushing it. You know, maybe for your next challenge, uh, you know, maybe instead of like going to nine different locations, maybe you could just pick one and do like those videos that I see on Instagram all the time of people who were like running marathons in like a Chick-fil-A parking lot or something like that. You know, just keep like running around and around, you know, just as an idea, you know, the mix it up for your next fast food running adventure. So uh, but congratulations. And when are we gonna see you in Disney again?
SPEAKER_07:Um, so I'm doing uh Goofy and then Dumbo. So pretty soon.
SPEAKER_09:Excellent.
SPEAKER_07:Perfect, excellent.
SPEAKER_09:Well, again, congratulations and thank you so much for joining us here on the Race Report Spotlight.
SPEAKER_07:Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_11:All right, now that the tacos are out of the way, let's talk turkey. Let's talk turkey, exactly. I I love where your head's at, Bob.
SPEAKER_09:Great box think alike.
SPEAKER_11:So here we go. Uh quick comment before we go down the list. This is the biggest race weekend in the United States, and God bless you, our rise and run family. You do not disappoint. Each year it gets bigger and bigger, and we actually I didn't count them all because I stopped at 70. We have 70 reports of turkey trots. I did my very best to catch every one that you made a report on. I hope I didn't miss any, but I tried. Um clearly, we're gonna have to be very quick, just to maybe a quick comment or two, or probably just the name of the race in the town. But I'm gonna start it out. We actually had one race on Wednesday. That was in Aurora, Indiana, where Carol did a pre-Turkey 5K. Now let's get to Thanksgiving Day. In Sugarland, Texas, the Sugarland Turkey Trot 2.8 mile family walk and run. Jennifer did it with her husband Steve and their friends. Uh, there's a five-mile timed event that her friend was going to, but that's what happened in Sugarland. In Louisville, Kentucky, the 45th Iroquois Hill Runners Thanksgiving Day run five miler. Ashley did it with her dog Toby. It was Toby's first race and Ashley's first five miler. I know it's a PR for Toby, but first five miler, PR for Ashley.
SPEAKER_09:Carol makes it back into the race report. She did the Thanksgiving Day Race 10K in Cincinnati, Ohio, and she notes that it's one of the country's oldest races. Also, staying in Ohio, in Champion, Ohio, we have the Koanis Turkey Trot 5 Miler. Great race report that we don't have time to repeat, but uh this is her first ever 5 miler, so PR.
SPEAKER_01:In Baton Rouge, Louisiana, the Baton Rouge Turkey Trot 5K. Emily and Jen did that. It's a good excuse to wear sparkles and glitter. In Orlando, Florida, the senior first turkey trot. John was there. Margaret, Tara, and Melissa were there. Tara's first turkey trot. They won best group costume for turkey inflatables. You know, with Margaret, you know there's a mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_09:And if I read their report right, I think they made the news. They did. Yep. So that doesn't shock me in the least bit.
SPEAKER_01:Michael was there, Tracy was there, our friend Heather was there all with friends.
SPEAKER_06:In Atlanta, Georgia, the Avesco Triple Q Thanksgiving Day Half Marathon. Sherry was there, Ashley was there, Anita was there. In Ocala, Florida, the YMCA Turkey Trot 10K, Hannah was there, and PR Dunfun.
SPEAKER_11:Go to Middleton, Massachusetts, the Middleton Turkey Trot 5K. Jessica and her husband Paul. Jessica PR'd this one by over five minutes. Down south in Fort Lauderdale, the Fort Lauderdale Turkey Trot 5K. Terry and Michael. They were on their way from Pennsylvania to the Disney Destiny and decided to kick in a 5K.
SPEAKER_09:Let's move up to Wellesley, Massachusetts for the Wellesley Turkey Trot 5K. Our buddy Rob did that with a 26-minute finish. And then down to Raleigh, North Carolina for the trophy trot. Boy, say that five times fat. And Brian, Cayley, and Mia all did that one.
SPEAKER_01:In Garner, North Carolina, the Freedom Ride Rescue Turkey Day 5K. Glenda did that one. In Bethesda, Maryland, the YMCA BCC Turkey Chase. Divio was there. First, it was the first race of the week, and we were out of order, so yeah, right.
SPEAKER_09:Well, she pre-gamed the tacos with turkey. She did.
SPEAKER_06:In Shelton, Connecticut, the Commodore Hall Thanksgiving Day 5K, Rachel was there. And in Highland Park, Illinois, the North Shore Turkey Trot 10K, Kelly was there. Might have squeezed in a P.O.T. Great job.
SPEAKER_11:Let's go to Austin, Texas for the Thundercloud Subs Turkey Trot. Tracy. Jacob son, first five-miler for both of them. Tracy finished in under 57 minutes. Jacob at under 47. That's a PR for both of them. Out in Pleasanton, California, Monica did the 11th annual Tri-Valley Turkey Burn 5K.
SPEAKER_09:Up next, we have the Briargate family YMCA Turkey Trot 5K. Richard and Lisa participated in that race. And then in Rivervale, New Jersey, we had the Rivervale 5K Turkey Trot. Michelle, Ariana, Rebecca, Ryder, Camilla, Nika, Hunter, and Charlet all participated in that race in New Jersey.
SPEAKER_01:Binghamton, New York, the Pete Keys Turkey Trot Five Miler. Steve did that. It's this first week of first race of two this weekend. And in Sanford, Florida, the Turkey Day 5K. Our friend Mary did that one.
SPEAKER_06:Up next in Fort Smith, Arkansas, which we know has to be Joe, the Mercy Turkey Trot run did this with the three amigos. In Knoxville, Tennessee, there was the Turkey Trot 5K. Bradley was there, and Jimmy was also there. Bradley said that the start temp was 38 degrees, which is pretty chilly for Tennessee. And Jimmy was in a great costume. He had the Swedish F um with a blow-up turkey as well.
SPEAKER_09:I know we're trying to be brief on these, but with Jimmy Bravo, I loved watching every single second of the videos that you put up. Yeah, they were great.
SPEAKER_11:All right, let's go to Fort Myers, Florida, where Rob and the dogs did the Edison Florida States Turkey Trot. Another turkey trot 10K in Houston. Brandy did it. She PR'd with her Flamingo friends. Another great outfit for Brandy, also. Race number 36 of the year for Brandy. She's putting them behind her. Good job.
SPEAKER_09:We next highlight the Chaos Crew. Monica did the officially unofficial Harmony Turkey Trot 5K. This is uh the second year for this homemade race. And then the area I'm from uh very familiar with, uh, we move to Garnet Valley, Pennsylvania for the Garnet Valley Turkey Trot 5K, and our buddy Yvette did that, and that is her first race of two this weekend as well.
SPEAKER_01:In Newport Richie, Florida, the Gobbler 5K. Laura Ann did that, and it was a decade PR for her by over three minutes.
SPEAKER_09:Way to go.
SPEAKER_01:In the Milwaukee Turkey Trot 5 and 8K, Heidi did the 8K.
SPEAKER_06:We now go to Charlotte, North Carolina for the Charlotte Turkey Trot 5K. Daniel, Catherine, Brandon, Aubrey, and Anna all ran together, and they're pretty sure that Catherine set another PR.
SPEAKER_11:It's a big deal to Catherine. She's 11, she loves the PR bell.
SPEAKER_06:That's awesome.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:In Palm Beach, Florida, the town of Palm Beach Turkey Trot 5K, Amber did this one, said there was great mile marker signs.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, they were. They were unique. Uh they had like mile one. They had a picture of a turkey going into the oven, like you're just getting started. Yeah, they're they're very clever. Let's go to McDonough, Georgia, where Marissa did the Turkey Trot 5K, her first 5K ever. That, of course, is a PR. Out in Omaha, Nebraska, another turkey trot 5K, and Matt was there for that one.
SPEAKER_09:In Houston, Texas, we have the turkey trot at Summerwood Elementary School. Katrina, Lucas, and Olivia participated, and this was the first turkey trot ever for Lucas and Olivia. Way to go. In Kennewick, Washington, it was the run for the red turkey trot, and Allison with her children, Avery and Shiloh, uh participated.
SPEAKER_01:In North Hollywood, California, the Hope Dominic Drumstick Dash LA 5K, Jackie and Fred in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, the Chagrin Booster 5K Turkey Trot. Melanie did that one.
SPEAKER_06:In Tacoma City, Washington, the Tacoma City Turkey Trot happened. Jessica was there with her sister and her children James and Mike Mason. Mason got a PR. In Elkhart, Indiana, the Faith Mission Turkey Stampede happened.
SPEAKER_09:That's a lot of turkeys.
unknown:Right.
SPEAKER_01:Was Les Nessman there?
SPEAKER_11:Les Nessman? Yeah. He was in uh Cincinnati. Oh, Cincinnati, you're right.
SPEAKER_05:Alexis was there. This was their first race. Oh, their first race report.
SPEAKER_11:First race report for Alexis, right. And uh Spartanburg, South Carolina, season and Mark did the Turkey Day 8K, first 8K distance for both of them. So there's two more PRs. Brooke was in Tavares, Florida for the Golden Triangle YMCA Turkey Trot 5K.
SPEAKER_09:Staying in the Sunshine State in Lutz, Florida, the Big Hair Wobble Turkey Trot 5K. Jessica participated. And then in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, uh, the Ashen Filter 8K Classic. Uh, this guy, let me check my notes. Uh, John ran ran that race. Hey John, how you doing? Doing good. John goes on to say that uh he finished this race before the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. Way to go, John.
SPEAKER_01:What's over, was over. Meekwan Thienesville Turkey Trot 5K. Noelle with her husband Ben and sons Maxon and James. It was James's first 5K, who was three years old.
SPEAKER_11:James was three, right.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. The MS Run 10K in Wilmington, Delaware. Matthew did that one.
SPEAKER_06:In San Antonio, there was the San Antonio Food Bank, Turkey Trot 5K. Abigail was there. In Novas Villa, Indiana, the Fit Livin THX run, which is a 1.5 mile race. Sarah was there with her youngest, who did the one mile race, and her son, niece, and Sarah ran the 1.5 mile.
SPEAKER_11:Okay. Let's go to Upland, California, the city of Upland Turkey Trot 5K. Steven was there. Cherilyn was in Groveland, Florida for the Groveland Turkey Trot 10K.
SPEAKER_09:Not running, but volunteering, our wonderful friends Debbie, Blake, and Meredith uh helped out at the Turkey Strut 5K in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. And then we have the Turkey Day Classic in, well, we couldn't figure out where exactly, but Kim and her son participated in the one mile run.
SPEAKER_01:In Covington, Louisiana, the Tameni Turkey Trot 5-Miler, Lisa with her godchild and nephew. It was her nephew's first distance race, so that's a PR. In Durham, North Carolina. Carolina, the fleet feet, Thanksgiving races. Morgan did that one. She did the 8K, sister Allison did the 5K, and they both grand PRs.
SPEAKER_06:In Shelton, Connecticut, the Commodore Hall turkey trot happened. Rachel was there with her sister, daughter, and nephew. This was town 168 out of 169 for Rachel. The Ashburn Farm Thanksgiving 10K happened. Jen was there. And Jen got a 15-minute 10K PR.
SPEAKER_11:All right, the Hollywood Classic 5K. I think this was in the Las Vegas area somewhere, because I think that's where Chris lives, along with Woody, Jesse, and for the first time ever, Pete. Those are Chris's Beagles. Sarah ran this one also. There was a turkey trot in Stratford, Connecticut. Nancy did it with her oldest daughter.
SPEAKER_09:Looks like I'm getting all the unofficial races, which is quite fun. We have the Cross Creek Turkey Trot 5K, which is, again, an unofficial neighborhood event uh that took place in Green Cove Springs, Florida. Melissa was pushing her baby at that one. And then what makes you sleepy after that Thanksgiving meal? They tripped a fan half marathon in what we believe is in Cummings, Georgia. Andrew ran that. Took his Marathon Weekend Fantastic Four outfit for a test run. My friend, great option there because you don't want you know a costume to be rubbing on you and they're all all the wrong places on the day of the race, so way to go.
SPEAKER_01:The Fester Five in Andover, Massachusetts, dug with Zeb. Zeb got a six-minute PR in the 5K. And there's another race we don't have info on, but they put it in the race report. Brandon and his husband finished the half walking due to injury.
SPEAKER_06:In Dublin, Ohio, the Flying Feathers 4Miler, Kayla and Austin did this, said it was about 20 degrees.
SPEAKER_02:Oof.
SPEAKER_06:Right. Oof. I haven't seen any races from Minnesota, but it was quite cold here too. So I've assumed that's why. Also happening in Ocean City, New Jersey, the fast and furriest 5K. Peter was there, said there was about 1,600 participants, but managed a PR on the cold morning.
SPEAKER_11:Let's go to Peoria, Illinois for the chocolate turkey three miler. Heather did it. This is a three-mile decade age group PR for Heather. In Claremont, Florida, Dania did the turkey trot at the park run in Claremont.
SPEAKER_09:And to wrap up our Thanksgiving Day turkey trots, in Murphysboro, Tennessee, we had the Borough Dash Four Miler. Kylie and her husband, Drew, participated. And then to round it all out, the gobble gobble gobble four miler in Somerville, Massachusetts. Sophie and her sister Muriel ran. And guess what? They both got PRs.
SPEAKER_01:I'm glad we had one race on Thanksgiving called the Gobble Gobble.
SPEAKER_09:I know.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like last year we had so many.
SPEAKER_09:Like I remember the one that sticks out in my head, there was like a huffin' for the stuffin'. Yeah. Gobble to you wobble and stuff like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:Gotta step it up with these creative names. We could have a contest now. Friends, how many turkey trots was that? I'll give you a hint. It's and I don't know exactly. It's right around 70. But I think it's cool. I think it's cool that uh you love to report them. I I read every one of them. I hope I didn't miss any, but thanks for doing it. Took a little while, but it was fun.
SPEAKER_09:My hand hurts from putting in all the PR bells.
SPEAKER_11:I got blisters on my fingers. Okay, let us continue because there were other races this weekend. This one, I think, occurred on Friday. I'm not positive. The Terratorn Trot at the Ice Age Fossils State Park in Las Vegas. Actually, not really a run, but an interesting and unique event. It was three miles. Sarah did it. She had to walk through the park, and that's that's just the way it worked. It was a way to visit the park. Looked really interesting. All right, let's move to Saturday in Sparks Glencoe, Maryland. The NCR trail marathon, and half Kelly ran the marathon. In Schombourg, Illinois, Laura did the Schomburg Turkey Trot half marathon. Ended up being Laura's first DNF because it was snowing. She slipped and broke her wrist. Ouch. Laura, take care of yourself. Hope that that heals quickly for you. We had a big one on Sunday, one that is probably approaching in number of rise and runners participating. It's probably close to burden hand, and that is the Space Coast Marathon and Half Marathon in Cocoa, Florida. A wonderful event. It is in fact Florida's oldest marathon, held the Sunday after Thanksgiving every year. Let's take a look here at our friends who participated running the marathon. Adam paced it at the last minute. Adam was going to be a pacer and guide for the half, but the woman he was going to guide could not come. So Adam got called into service to be a marathon pacer. Paced the 445 group and came in two seconds off target. Not too shabby. He picked up a runner at mile 17 that had gone out too fast. Never done Galloway before. So this fella joined in, held on to the end, came from his first marathon maybe 18 months ago. He ran 525. This one, he ran 443, a 42-minute PR. I think that's great. That's an unidentified runner, but I know Adam feels really good about that, being able to help him to that PR. That's cool. Angie ran the marathon. She was slow because she's got a hip injury that's healing. What she did, I remember I only I've run this event six times. I've been to this event six times. I only did the marathon one time. The tough part about the marathon is you you start in Coco, you go north, you turn around, you come back, and you pass a sign that says, Hey, if you want to stop here, this is a half marathon. Well, because Angie's nursing this hip injury, she stopped there, so she ended up running a half. They get a medal for that? Yeah, they'll give you the half marathon medal for that. Yep, absolutely. Um our friend Heather was rolling there, did her second fastest marathon, set a course PR.
SPEAKER_06:Did you guys see that epic picture of her? Yes. Yeah.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah.
SPEAKER_06:She was amazing.
SPEAKER_11:In silhouette. Yeah, that's very yeah. That that's one of the neat parts about going up on the north half to start is the sunsets. Sunset. Sunrise is gorgeous. I saw Heather a couple of times on the course, and of course, before. She said, shots, fist bumps, going back to the finish with friends were definitely some highlights. And we actually caught her. She had come past us to finish, then turned around and came back and picked up some other friends. Uh Kay did the marathon. K PR'd by 38 minutes. It was it was the costume. It could have been. Yeah, she know who she was? I thought she was one of the Jetsons. Yep. Judy Jetson. Judy? Okay. Margaret. Margaret was actually in a costume too, believe it or not.
SPEAKER_09:No, really.
SPEAKER_11:No, you can't believe that. But I don't remember what. Oh, was she?
SPEAKER_06:I think so.
SPEAKER_11:I don't think she was Buzz Lightyear. I I don't remember. I don't remember. Margaret, I'm sorry, I don't remember. I I know Jen was there. Jen and uh Ryan Ryan was pacing. I forget what group Ryan was pacing, but he was. Uh Debbie was there with Jessica. It was Debbie's first marathon. That's a PR. Jessica's first non-run Disney marathon. And a 14-minute PR. See, Lauren was there. Lauren had some issues. Her heart rate increased really dramatically. So she dropped her uh race intervals to 3030, and Coach Twiggs stayed with her. Coach uh was a pacer, but he dropped back to stay with Lauren. So she finished, and she finished feeling strong. So that's a good success story there. Quite a few of us ran the half. Amy was there running it the day before her birthday. I did this, this was half number five, and this completed. They have four-year series where they give you these medals. We've talked about them before. The medals at Space Coast are legendary. So uh I, along with multiple others, are leaving with these two monstrous medals. But that's fun. We saw the medals for the next couple years.
SPEAKER_01:I've seen some of them that were there. I guess they had uh all their medals from the prior years to do that whole event.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah, I Becky told me to bring them and I didn't. It would have been nice to get a photo of all of them.
SPEAKER_09:I I want to I want to say this year's medal looked about the size, Bob. I'm curious. Were you able to eat any leftovers, Thanksgiving leftover desserts on your medal?
SPEAKER_11:Oh, you could have had uh there's room here. I've got it in front of me, Greg. There's there's room here for turkey, you can put a little stuffing over here, some mashed potatoes. It's the size one of you guys said this earlier. I mean I'm I'm holding it up. It doesn't really work on an audio podcast, but it covers my face, which many of you would say is probably a good thing. Uh that's why it's an audio podcast, right, Bob? That's right. I've got it. Somebody told me I had a voice for radio, and I said I have a face for radio too. Someone said it's about the size of a 45 RPM record. That's what I said. That's pretty close.
SPEAKER_01:Was that you, John? Yeah. Well, I don't know if they know what 45s are, Alicia and Greg.
SPEAKER_09:I know what a 45 is, John.
SPEAKER_06:I know what it is.
SPEAKER_11:That's pretty close. It's it, I mean, it literally, I haven't seen a 45 for years, but it literally is just about that big. Uh they changed them for next year, the next four-year race series. The medals for each of the the medals for each of the years are just about the same. Now, in previous years they're they were all unique, but the four races are the same, and they didn't have the challenge medals to show us. The they're smaller, they're definitely smaller than they've been in the past, but I was able to pick one up. Oh, good grief. It's still really heavy.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe watch your back on that.
SPEAKER_11:Oh, yeah, yeah, somebody pointed that out. Let's see, let's continue down the list. Carolyn was there. Carolyn finished the four-year race challenge. She ran this one dressed as Marvin the Martian. Uh, Debbie was there. Ellie had planned to be there, but she completed this one virtually. Haley was there. Jason, I saw Jason a couple times. He didn't run. He was dressed as Mario, and he kept showing up at different points on the course. I don't know how he kept getting ahead of me. I'm pretty slow though, so he might have just run, I'm not sure. Uh Julie was there. Julie Rich and Emmy from Cincinnati and Flying Pig Fame. They were all there. Uh, Dania was there, Melissa, Valerie, Nancy, Michael was there, Michael Piard. Jared did uh Space Coast half number seven. Kept up a great pace, had a terrific time. Tracy, her sixth year there also, so she got all the medals, stuck with the four runs, stuck with four friends for the race, and then she went to Walt Disney World to take a photo with her medals, and Tracy had all Tracy had all six of them on at once. I don't think I could do that. I don't think I have the strength. Uh let's see, Tara. Tara was there from Canada with her friend, I think Melissa. So it was her first time at Space Coast and she PR'd the half. As I said, Melissa was there, so was Roxanne, so was Stephanie, and if you were there and I missed you, I'm sorry. But it was fun seeing everybody. We we had a little get together at the uh Village Idiot pub. I think it's only appropriate. And uh just had a good time. Sunday after Thanksgiving. If you're in the area or if you're looking for a destination race, I know it's a tough time to travel, but it's a great one.
SPEAKER_09:Yeah, I would say I I think that's probably the only thing that that probably keeps me from it is just you know, airfare prices for that weekend are going to be a good thing. Yeah, that weekend's hard roof.
SPEAKER_11:Yeah. Yeah. So from uh from the Space Coast, let's go to Seattle. The Seattle Marathon and Half. Hero was there running the half, said it was a beautiful day, but cold, hilly. But the big problem was the course ended up running to a choke point at the end. Uh folks are generally nice about it, but the finish was a mess. So she says one and done for this one. Lace ran her first full marathon ever. PR. She says she stuck with the six-hour pace group. Came in at 5.55. That's rock solid for a first marathon. Absolutely. This went past the marathon went past many of Seattle's landmarks ending on the waterfront. Was hilly, but the pace group really helped keep her spirits up, as did the holler hypes that she got. Helped her navigate her ship to the finish line with, as we mentioned already, a PR. In the Netherlands, Danny ran the Spike Nessa Spark Marathon in Spike Nessa, the Netherlands. About 1,100 runners there. Weather was pretty good. About 50 degrees, but the wind was gusting up to 40 miles an hour. Yikes. Now it was primarily headwind going out, which is the way to do it, because then you get the tailwind coming back. He loved the course running between farmlands. Really good time for the half for Danny, who generally logs good times for the half. This one, just a little over an hour and 36 minutes. In Binghamton, New York, Steve, who was on the race report earlier, ran the Ugly Sweater 5K. The wind chill was 19 degrees. A good temperature to be running in an ugly sweater. Swag at the end of the race was a Christmas stocking and a medal that doubles as a Christmas tree ornament. Cookies and hot chocolate as a finish line, as well as awards for the ugliest sweater. And while Steve's sweater was truly ugly, he didn't win. In Middletown, New Jersey, Kelly with her father and her husband, ran the Navasync 5K. It was a soggy morning. The tagline for this annual race is Kill the Hill. So you definitely know when you're signing up and you're registering, you know what you're getting in for. First and last half miles of the race were trails. Kelly was close to her PR while her dad finished age group third place again. A nice successful race there.
SPEAKER_01:That actually is uh that area. It's the highest coastal point on the east coast. Oh wow. It's about I I my my grandfather grew up when I grew up, had a house in Middletown. Well, it's Leonardo, which is part of the township there. But uh and I remember going down to Atlantic Highlands in that area, and it's big big hill, then you go down the Sandy Hook.
SPEAKER_11:So I okay Wow, yeah, because typically coastal areas are pretty flat. But yeah, all right, good job, guys. In Doylestown, Pennsylvania, the Jingle Bell Trot 5K Evet was there. You wear jingle bells on your shoes. I have a story about that, but the race reports run long enough. I'll save it for another time. It was cold and was supposed to be raining, but it didn't. It snowed. Yvette listened to Christmas music the whole time and loved it. And here we are, friends. We finished up the race report. Not with a run, but with a ride. Our friend Rob was in Naples, Florida for the 21st annual Iron Joe Turkey Ride, a hundred kilometer bicycle event. Good job, Rob. There we have it, friends. The race report, and by golly, you did a good job of getting the reports into us for episode 219. Alright, my friends, and if you run, you know you are our friend. That's it. Thanksgiving's over. Now we can get these, just get these messy Christmas and New Year holidays out of the way. We'll be back to running at Disney again. Training, we've talked about it. Training's tough, but here we go. This is the last hard push on training, and you've got this. You can do it. Mentioned earlier, this is the Zoom Thursday, so hopefully we'll see you there. But until then, happy running.
SPEAKER_09:The Rising Run podcast discusses general information about Run Disney and is in no way affiliated with Run Disney or the Walt Disney company. Any information about advice discussed on this podcast should not be considered medical fight. It is always consoled with your health care fight or medical organization.
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