The irony of that would come to me in a conversation I had yesterday. A friend has challenged me to The Dopey Classic in January of 2019. Four days of racing through Disney. A 5k, a 10k, a half marathon and a full marathon. We talked through the fund raising opportunity it gave us at Team 1DOS for the American Heart Association. It was an appealing business opportunity and a good personal one, as someone close to me had open heart surgery two weeks ago. I considered the other positives of the event, like warm weather in January, running with friends, running through the backdrop of Disney......perhaps I was awestruck by the possibilities in that moment, but I jumped at it as I often do when challenges arise these days....let us not forget the two glass of wine infused banter on New Years Eve last year that led to me finding myself 20 miles deep, on the side of a mountain, in West Virginia this August, conquering the Beast.
Later, the excitement of the moment would wear off. I would be driving and suddenly the math would kick in. That was about 49 miles of running in four days, the last day being a distance I have never done, let alone on a fourth consecutive day of running. Dopey. Dopey as in dumb, was suddenly my thought. No wonder they named it this. I must have lost my mind.
As I tried to make sense of what I just committed to, I spent a moment really thinking about Dopey. Who was this guy anyway? A guy who would have the mother load of races named after him, despite the connotation of his character. As it turns out, he was the youngest of the seven. He was often spoken for, or ordered around. It was said that he actually did not speak simply because he did not know he could. With all of this he was essentially the dwarf that was really counted out in most things as he was perceived as having little to offer. So, he simply followed along with the others marching to their steps instead of his own.
This made me think about how many times we shy away from things that seem simply impossible because we have allowed other influences to convince ourselves we can't. We walk the same mundane steps behind everyone else not knowing that we really don't have to. We take what others have to say at face value, albeit destructive to our own growth, because we simply do not realize we have our own voice.
As I consider all of this, I suddenly realize that I really don't identify with Happy. Not by a long shot. It is probably safe to say I never truly have. I really am way more like Dopey, learning to find my own voice and see what is truly possible when I choose to believe I might be capable of more. So, maybe the good people of Disney did not name this the Dopey Challenge due to the crazy nature of the run, but more as an opportunity for us to learn how to find our own voices and see what is truly possible when we step out of the mundane heigh ho march of life behind everyone else.
Although the notion of 49 miles in four days still gives me palpitations 24 hours later, I truly believe this Dopey will find a whole new voice right there in the Magic Kingdom. I will likely have my own march that will be far less glamorous than the march of the dwarfs and more the walk of someone who just covered 49 miles in four days. I would suspect it will look more like a baby giraffe trying to stand for the first time, but nonetheless it will be mine and only mine. As I stare down the twelve months of training and fund raising that now is laid out in front of me, I can once again see, the best is yet to come.
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