Every Wish That We Put Into Motion.... (comments welcome!)

[Herding_Cats]

Take a deep breath. Celebrate your daughter's birthday! Then decide what's the one most pressing thing to do. Lather, rinse, repeat one at a time. Done!

Seriously though, I feel you. I kinda freaked out yesterday when I saw the one week to go post on rD social. But one week from now we'll be wearing our 5K medals and all of this will be behind us!

Oh yeah. Me putting stuff off until the last minute is kind of what I do. And if I had already packed, I would be frantically UN-packing and double/triple checking what I DID pack. Plus, when you have 4 kids home all day, every day, during school break, there's no point in cleaning the house early because they'll just trash it again in 3 days.

 

[azrivest]

Plus, when you have 4 kids home all day, every day, during school break, there's no point in cleaning the house early because they'll just trash it again in 3 days.

That's what I was gonna say During the pandemic, I once saw a meme that said "Cleaning the house with the kids at home is like brushing your teeth while eating Oreos". Yup.

We started our packing lists and some of the packing today, but I know if I put my stuff in my suitcase I'll just dig it out again tomorrow.

We got this!

 

[superchime]

Same here! I can't actually pack because I need to see everything one more time before I leave. So I just make piles. So many piles.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I’m stuck in the car for another 3 hours, so I figured I would start my MW recap. Please excuse typos (I’ll probably come back and fix them when I’m not typing everything on my phone.)

First let’s look at November/December. Got a pretty hefty cold from my kids. Then pulled my calf. And then got another cold just as my calf was back to being good enough to train on. Total miles run in December were less than 40. Wheeeee!

Saturday, 12/30: MIL came over so we could leave early enough Sunday morning for our drive down to Detroit. Our flight was originally for Monday, but Delta had changed our flights a bunch of times, so we adjusted our plans, and changed our flights to essentially give ourselves an extra day of vacation.

Sunday, 12/31: It was an uneventful drive down to Detroit, and we were lucky enough to be seated next to each other as we had selected Basic Economy on delta, which does not include a seat selection. We figured that it wasn’t worth $100ish to sit next to each other for a 3hr flight. Once we landed and road the tram to the main terminal area, DH and I split up; he went to get the rental car (Thrifty) and I went to A terminal to get our toll pass, and then back to B terminal to grab our checked bags. There was only 1 person in line in front of DH at the rental counter, and we were in our car 30min after getting off the plane. We stayed the night at the Rosen Inn at Lake Buena Vista. This resort was exactly what the reviews said: older, but CLEAN. And it was only $100 on NYE, which you absolutely cannot beat. We did a takeout order for dinner and stopped at a liquor store for stuff at our resort since we didn’t want to deal with having to schedule a Walmart delivery when we would be there for present ID.

Monday, 1/1: We got up too early so we could put everything back in our car and then park at Saratoga and take a bus to Epcot. Managed to get a morning VQ for Guardians, and started stacking up G+ for HS in the afternoon. The part was soooo empty for the first half of the day, it was easy to get a lot of things done with standby, but TT was down for most of the morning; we never managed to get on it the whole week. Then it was time for margaritas in Mexico, pizza in Italy (the pizza window was open!), and baklava in Morocco. And then we wrapped the day up with fireworks at MK. We got there later than we wanted, and they were directing us up the left side “there’s LOTS of room up front!” and just as we got up to the front, they turned us back around and sent us backstage by Casey’s and back into Main Street by the Christmas tree. So frustrating! We missed the first few minutes, but I still got to see enough to cry, and we got to see the projections they put on the Main Street facades for the first time (we are usually up in the hub.) And THEN it was back to Epcot to ride guardians again during the extended hours for deluxe resorts. Yep. Open/closed a park the first day.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Tuesday, 1/2: Rope-dropped AK for Flight of Passage. Somehow ended up in the bottom left corner, which honestly is one of the worst places to be as far as picture quality. And I'm not sure if it's just me/my eyes, but I feel like some of the 3D effect is getting more blurry/doubled as this ride ages. After FOP we rode EE, then walked back over to the Safari. The cheetahs were OUT and moving around, which is something we'd never seen before; usually we are squinting to see one that's curled up in a ball back in the shadows somewhere.

After grabbing some snacks, we rode the train out to Rafiki's Planet Watch and did the animation drawing which was really fun! We got to draw Bambi.

I joked with DH that we should just stay and keep drawing all morning until it was time for our lunch reservation at Sanaa. Speaking of which, I somehow confused our 12:55 ADR with 11:55 and we showed up over an hour early, and we were so hungry. We took a chance and went down and asked if we could be seated before our scheduled time, and they said no problem and we were sat 5min later. This is one of my favorite meals at Disney. We don't have any Indian places up where we live, so this is pretty much the only time we get to have bread service. When we were done eating, we asked for containers for our leftover sauces, and our server just brought us out a whole new set of all of them. Being in a room so close to DS, we just planned on grabbing naan from Eet when we felt like repeating this meal.

After lunch, we stopped at our room to drop off our leftovers, and then hopped to MK (again.) Our My original plan was to watch HEA on Tuesday night (fireworks on ALL of the nights!), but since we had fit them in on Monday, we ended up riding a few thing things and then heading back to the room. We wanted something sweet to end the night, so we walked over to Ghirardelli and got sundaes. Pro-tip. When it's in the low 50s/upper 40s, don't try to walk all the way back to your resort with a hot fudge sundae, because the fudge will have hardened by the time you get back and be really difficult to eat.

Wednesday, 1/3: Expo day! Yet another early-morning wakeup. DH and I divided ourselves up for expo groups (him, DS1 and DD in one group, and myself, SIL, DS2, and DS3 in a separate group) to see who could get the earliest one and have an extra space or 2 for anyone here that got a late group. DH ended up with group 5 and Z Knight joined us for the foray into the octagon merch building. I was not prepared for the line waiting to get into WWOS itself, and we were all the way back by the resort busses and completely unsure if we were in the right line (was it for merch? was it for bibs? was it just to get in the gates?) since there were no CMs there explaining what the line was for.

It wasn't horrible while we were into the rundisney merch building, but it was a bit disconcerting how many people were stacked up around the perimeter with massive piles of stuff just sitting there. It's like that every year, but there were some really big piles. I don't know that I even saw the purple Dopey jackets, and were were some of the first non-club people in there. We did mobile checkout and it was applying the 20% DVC discount even though we did not purchase our contract directly from Disney. We also grabbed a jacket for another board-member. They didn't have the size she wanted, so we grabbed 2 jackets and messaged her about it, and when DH went to put the unwanted one back he was nearly attacked by 2 women when he went to hang it back up. I really disliked the setup for the big number backdrops since we couldn't find the half or the full. Last year's setup was waaaaay more logical. They did not need as much space set aside for Mobile checkout as they had roped off (IMO, based on when we were in there) and could have had everything together instead of spread across 2 rooms.

After grabbing a pineapple cider and a beer, it was off to bib pickup. We were in the "holding" room for that when I looked and DH and stated "OH NO. I left my wallet in the room. Which means I don't have my drivers license." In reality, it was still in the car, but I didn't know that and we started to make a plan for how we would split up for me to get it, and then meet back up later. But then I remembered that I had a picture of my license in an email for being a volunteer driver for our school last year. I asked someone inside if I would be allowed to use a picture of my license, and he assured me it would be fine. We poked around the expo building briefly, handed of the jacket, and got out of the madness.

We did head to DS and order our character sketches. The popularity of those seems to have gone waaaay up as they told us it would be about a month before they show up. The last couple of years they have gotten home a day or 2 after we get back, so this is a pretty dramatic increase in lead-time.

Dinner was at Morimoto. Always yummy. Had the same server as last year. DH teases me that I'm a cheap date because I always get the duck ramen there, but it's always good and there's a TON of it.

 

[azrivest]

I feel like some of the 3D effect is getting more blurry/doubled as this ride ages.

I was complaining about this to DH last night. It's my kids' favorite, so we always rope-drop it + pay the ILL to do it twice in one day. It's a lot of money for a blurry movie

They can take down RnR twice in 18 months for refurb, but they can't do it for FoP?

 

[Herding_Cats]

Thursday, 1/4: Wanna have people yell the same phrase out to you for an entire 5k? Dress as characters from A League of Their Own. "There's no crying in baseball!" "There's not crying in a 5k!"

We stopped for less characters than I thought we would, but the lines for some of them were so long, and we had park plans for after the race (which, I missed the change in hours, so it ended up being that we could have taken tons of time because we weren't going to be back to our room, cleaned up, and to the park before general entry started anyway.) Oh well. We leap-frogged with TheExpert quite a few times, which helped DH understand why it's been so easy to run with her the last couple of years; our paces just match up. DH and I split a cider after the finish, and hurried (unnecessarily) back to our room to get ready to go to MK.

I finally got to ride Tron, which is fun but significantly shorter than I feel like it could have been. And why did it take them 7 years to build this? DH and I had been having fun taking silly ride pictures, and this one is REALLY easy to get one on because it's just right at the beginning.


This was also the day that MIL texted DH about the fact the one of our dogs who had been having some health struggles had quit eating. We gave her some ideas of real-food things we knew might entice him, and DH started to stress out about the decisions we had made regarding waiting until we got home from the trip to let him go.

That evening we had a fireworks viewing at Spice Road Table reservation. Looking back, we probably didn't really need it, but my experience with Epcot fireworks is that you really need to camp out somewhere if you want an unobstructed view. The park ended up being way less busy than I was expecting, but hey! Bottomless mimosas, right? I said I was only going to drink one, and then I think I had 3 or 4. The food was underwhelming. It didn't help that it was COLD, and there was quite a breeze coming right off the lagoon to us, and our food didn't stay hot for more than 2 or 3 minutes after being served. We didn't get into bed until almost 11, and I barely slept. Also, comparing the Epcot fireworks to MK: Epcot’s are SO LOUD. How are they so much louder than HEA??? I didn’t enjoy that aspect, and while I enjoy fireworks in general, the theming at Epcot seemed….disjointed? Don’t get me wrong, HEA is a whole lot of IP mashed together, but in that instance it works.

Friday, 1/5: ummm, BRRR! We had stopped at a store and grabbed some leggings for my 10k costume on the day we flew down, and I was SO GLAD we made that decision. Someone in the MW thread said something about this race being horrible for everyone as far as temperatures go, and they were right. I was absolutely exhausted, and I 100% could have fallen asleep in the corral if I'd had something to lay down on. Once again, we didn't stop for many characters, but I did enjoy the amount of park time this course affords us. Everything has kind of run together at this point, so I don't remember a lot of specifics. We pulled over with 0.25mi to go to grab our GotG VQ, much to DH's horror. He wanted to finish the race and THEN get the VQ, but I kept pointing out that there was too much stuff that we had to keep moving for in the finish chute to do that, so we stopped just past the choir (to protect our ears!) to stand and refresh our phones.

We had intended to hit Epcot again, check out more of the nooks and crannies of WS, and then head over to HH for the meetup. As it turned out, both of us were super tired, so we went back to our room, cleaned up, and went back to bed. We both set alarms for 11am (without discussing it with each other) and were OUT. So worth it. I'm FIRMLY team-nap after this race weekend because they really helped me feel so much better.

HH was a success (I think?) because we had quite a few people show up! Some first-timers, some every-timers. There was a good mix, and the weather ended up being pretty nice to just sit or stand outside and talk. Unfortunately for DH, he started getting a bunch of work calls, and his mom texted again about our dog continuing to struggle; he wouldn't stand up/come out of his crate, still wasn't eating, etc. He made arrangements with his brother to come take him to the vet if needed since that's not something we wanted to subject any of our kids to (and our oldest flat out said he wouldn't do it before we even said anything about it.)

After HH, we rode Guardians, watching DS2's basketball game on my phone while we made our way through the queue, and then went back to the room. On the bus ride, someone mentioned that they half course was getting shortened, so I immediately came here to see what the consensus was about how things were being planned. I'm glad they announced early, because we were in bed by 8, even with the long nap that morning.

 

[Herding_Cats]

I was complaining about this to DH last night. It's my kids' favorite, so we always rope-drop it + pay the ILL to do it twice in one day. It's a lot of money for a blurry movie

They can take down RnR twice in 18 months for refurb, but they can't do it for FoP?

Ok, I feel less crazy since it's not just me then. I think the issue with taking FoP offline for AK is there's not really that much else to do there. I already feel like it's a half-day park, especially if you do G+ and/or an $ILL there. I don't think the park could effectively absorb the 3-hour line of people who ride FoP standby.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Saturday, 1/6: Half of a half. Well. It was something.

Kudos to Disney for making a call, sticking to it, and cramming all of the characters from that leaked list into 7.1 miles. That being said, this was not fun to run. And it definitely was NOT how I wanted DH's first HM experience to go. We packed a bunch of stuff in our gear-check bags in case it did rain significantly while we were on course (slides to get out of wet shoes, dry clothes, ponchos, mylar to put on the seats of the car, towels IN the car) but fortunately for us, the rain just started when we were finishing. Pulling into the parking lot it was a little worrying to see so many runners out running in the active-use parts of the parking lots (without reflective gear as Bree pointed out.) I understand people wanting to get the miles in to make it "feel like the real thing." I really do. But there were lots that weren't being used for parking that they could have run in. And back at our resort, those who had chosen to run AFTER the race were pretty grumpy when we stopped to let them cross the road; we received a lot of glares for not slowing down super early? for stopping to let them cross? I'm not sure, but it was raining quite hard and IMO if you decided to run in that, you don't get to be crabby at other people for also existing at the resort. The wind was also pretty significant at the end, and when you go through that "tunnel" just before the choir in Epcot, most of the letters blew off the back of DH's shirt.

We didn't stick around for anything after the race, and chose to make a quick exit to our car. Turns out that was the right choice as they were hurrying people out of the reunion area, and the beer tent was closed (DH had planned on getting a beer after the race) and I'm not sure they even PP out for the finisher-paddle pictures? We went back to the resort and took another nap.

Looking for something to do, we went back over to the expo. I was SHOCKED at how many people were still there! At how many people were JUST picking up their race bibs! I even saw a guy carrying a bag of dopey shirts (the weekend set) to his car. Maybe he was trying to do a size exchange? Seemed really weird to me. Oh, hey. You know how you can buy the signage from the expo during the last couple of days? Yeah. Don't do that unless you're driving home. Shipping is bananas. How do I know this? Because we bought 2 of them. And then went to a UPS store to ship them home. And yeah. I don't want to think about it any more. They'll be here by Friday (pending storm delays?) thought, and I'll add a pic.


We rounded the day out with laundry, some pool time (since it ended up being the warmest day of the week!) and an early bedtime for me. We did spend too long after we left WWOS trying to figure out where I could get some pasta dinner without having to walk to DS or bus to a park and then transfer to another resort, and then reverse that to get back to Saratoga. We ended up with ginger chicken ramen from Morimoto Street Food; this was great because the ginger helped settle my marathon-nervous tummy, and it was salty, carb-y, and not too heavy feeling. As it turns out, we could have just gone to the quick service at the resort; but they didn't put their "runners special" pasta offering on the mobile order (even though the bagel/banana box was!) and we would have had to have noticed a sign for it in there during the week. Kind of a fail on their part IMO.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Sunday, 1/7: The marathon. Honestly, this is the best I've EVER felt before a marathon mentally and emotionally. I was the messiest of hot messes last year the morning of the full, and had a really hard time in 2022 as well (when I "only" ran Goofy.) Maybe it was running half the miles the day before. Maybe it was 2 days of naps AND early bedtimes. Maybe it was actually being able to get myself to eat. Whatever it was, I was at least mentally ready for Sunday. I was in a great mood, I wasn't worrying about the race, and I was genuinely excited to be there. Physically....ehhhh...I knew it was going to hurt a lot at some point and recovery might take longer because training was not what it could or should have been. But with this being my 4th marathon, I knew it was mostly just a matter of getting through it.


I'm going to put this up front. This marathon is the one that I'm the least excited to have finished. I didn't have a big sense of accomplishment that I've gotten in the past (not to be confused with being happy to have completed a marathon) and it made it feel a little bit.....weird. I know we talk about races being a celebration of your training, and maybe that's what it really boiled down to; there wasn't really training to celebrate. I just did it. And for me, this is kind of a dangerous thing to know; I can definitely see it opening up the door to me making excuses in future training programs because I was able to get away with what I did this year. I'm still trying to unpack it. (I'm also secretly hoping that DH saw it and says yes to a marathon one of these years.)

ANYWAY, it was great to see so many at the meetup on Sunday morning. I was about mid-C corral again. My watch disconnected just before the start (I felt like the waves were a lot bigger on Sunday?) and wasn't re-connected before I had to hit start and cross the timing mat. My goal for the early part of the race was to run approximately 14:00 miles. I knew I wanted to stop at the last bathrooms in Epcot, and then in MK. Well the location of the bathrooms in Epcot, combined with the narrowness of the course right at that point was ridiculous. There was no running past that point when I exited for the bathroom, nor when I re-entered the course. This (in the bathroom) was also where I ditched my long-sleeve layer because I was already sweating a lot. Mile 5 was sub-13 (shockingly!) and the rest of the miles except for the bathroom stop were anywhere from 13:28-14:27, so I was right on my target for pacing.

It started to sprinkle as I passed BLT and grabbed a hug and a tissue from The Expert, and it was fully raining by the time we hit the bus loop at MK. I was REALLY nervous about standing water in the downhill part of the course by Tron, but it was draining well and it wasn't as deep as I feared it would be. I did stop at the Gaston bathrooms because there was no line, and I wanted to look at the radar and make a plan if this was going to be anything more than a quick band of weather. By the time I finished up there, it was almost done raining. We were actually able to run through the castle tunnel this year, and poor etiquette (as expected) reigned on that exit ramp as people swerved and nearly stopped for PP. *sigh* If they would just maintain pace it was quite nicely spread out at that point, but noooooo. The photographers in front of the castle were really cranking people out, and there were no offers from them about jump pics (not that I was risking a jump in the rain!) and they just seemed really focused on keeping people moving as quickly as possible.


As I was exiting MK, I got a text from Mr_Incr3dible comparing our locations as we were going to try to run together for the 2nd half or so of the race. I stopped at a med tent to slather my feet with vaseline and wring my socks out, and he caught up to my at around the Polynesian. For the rest of the race we chattered on about various aspects of our lives, bits of trivia about things in the park, and about our experiences on the course before meeting up that morning. It was a great distraction. One of these years I'm going to have to run a marathon without someone else to distract me, but that's not going to be any time soon. One thing I noticed is that Mr_Incr3dible walks much more quickly than I do, so although we did a significant amount of walking after AK, we were still managing sub-16 miles easily.


Our main disappointment was passing EE and learning that we would have to either go through the standby line or the single rider line, and that both would be about 30 minutes. Now, I understand that they can inflate these times to encourage people to keep moving, but we were only about 40min ahead of the 7:00 pacers at that point. There were a LOT of people in the single rider line and it looked like it would likely be pretty close to actually being 30min so we decided to keep moving. We discussed possibly stopping for RnR, and seeing how that line looked, but as usually for me, by the time we got there I knew sitting down would be just about the worst possible thing I could do.

DH met me in the finish area where I basically collapsed onto my mylar (which I specifically brought to sit on) and pulled on my compression socks while eating a PBJ sandwich he brought me. I hobbled over to the backdrops for a marathon paddle picture (the dopey paddle lines were too long for me at that point) and then out to the car. I had originally planned to ride the race bus back because it's right there in the finish area, but figured that a little active recovery would probably be a good idea. Even though DH had been able to park fairly close, it was still a looooong walk. He went and picked up food from the counter-service at he resort while I cleaned up and soaked in epsom salt, and listened to me complain about how much my feet hurt for most of the remainder of the evening. They hurt so much, and we tried all sorts of things: socks, no socks, elevated, heat, cold. And for once, I actually had an appetite post-race. I ate that whole sandwich, and then I ate a whole pizza. And later I ate a breakfast sandwich, and pretzels, and the rest of the white cheddar popcorners, and had some peach margarita. And then the leftover desserts from Spice Road table. I was the very hungry caterpillar. So maybe, just maybe, it was the heat the last 2 years that zapped my appetite and not the mileage. More things to consider.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Monday, 1/8: Ugh. I don't wanna talk about Monday. I mean, I do, but I also don't. And if you were at DATW, you already know why.

On Sunday night, we had done quite a bit of the packing so we could fully enjoy my over-booked Monday plan. We slept in a tiny bit, and got to MK about 10min before they let everyone into all of the parts of the park. We had gotten BG 9 for Tron, so we hit up Space Ranger Spin before we rode that. Well, our ride/game paused for someone to transfer from a wheelchair or ECV, and I was right in front of a target that was worth about 500pts. So I kept shooting. And DH thought that they disabled everything when they paused the ride; the next thing he knew, I had a 70k point lead on him! This, of course, meant we had a re-match after riding Tron.


After that, we headed back to the hub area where there was dedicated pp last year (on the right side, kind of by the plaza.) Well, they weren't there (yet?) so I staged a bunch of our pics like we had done the previous year, and similar to what was shared in the MW thread.


Then we went and got a picture in the hub near the bridge to Liberty Square., pics in the left tower up near the castle,

and then pictures on the bridge to Liberty Square. (There's a small opening and you can get pics without people in the background.)



We mobile ordered fruit and nutella waffles from Sleepy Hollow, and THEN we went back to Pete's Silly Sideshow to get medal pics with Donald/Goofy and Minnie/Daisy. These took way longer than I would have liked. When we got in the first line it said 10min and was more like 20. And when we looped back in for the 2nd line, it said 30 and was more like 50. Soooooo yeah. At that point, it was nearly noon, and we were ready for a break, so we went back to finish packing up the room and put suitcases in the car.

Looking to take up some more time before hopping to Epcot to join the DATW crew, we hopped a bus to HS, and then rode the skyliner over the Epcot. We mobile ordered Fish and Chips from UK, and then grabbed margaritas from Mexico and caught up with everyone at America.

While we were at UK, DS3 texted me that our dog who had been doing poorly wasn't breathing. DH immediately went and called MIL and we found out that he had just passed away. I gave myself about 15min to be really sad, and then put it in a box and firmly locked the lid and did my best to enjoy the rest of the day. We knew it was going to happen soon, and we were really hoping we would make it home in time to help our kids process it, not have MIL be the one to have to deal with it, etc. And we didn't want to take him in before we left because DD has been on this kick lately where she looks at a picture we have of a previous dog (before she was born) and tells us how much she misses him, and we didn't want MIL to have to manage the freshness of that with her. There was no right decision to make, and it wasn't something we could control from 1500 miles away. And it sucked so much. 9 years is a long time for a large-breed dog, but dang it's just not long enough.

 

[garneska]

So sorry about the loss of your fur baby. That really had to be a hard decision. peace and hugs.

 

[nancipants]

So sorry about your dog.

Congratulations on finishing the marathon. I was glad to meet you before the 10k!

 

[azrivest]

Sorry about your dog How are the kids doing?

Congratulations on the marathon. I must have passed you and Mr_Incredible on the course but I missed saying hello.

 

[WillRunForPizza]

Wow, what an emotional roller coaster of a weekend. So sorry about your pupper. That's always hard but especially when you're away

But at the same time, congrats on Dopey! I love your Medal Monday pics.

 

[DopeyBadger]

 

[jmasgat]

Sorry for all the ups and downs you've experienced over the last few days, and that you couldn't be there when your dog died. Healing thoughts to you and your family.

 

[Scootin'By]

So sorry to hear about your puppy It is ALWAYS a hard decision.

Wanna have people yell the same phrase out to you for an entire 5k? Dress as characters from A League of Their Own. "There's no crying in baseball!" "There's not crying in a 5k!"

That sounds like it was funny the first time and terrible every time after that

 

[Herding_Cats]

That sounds like it was funny the first time and terrible every time after that

We were honestly pretty surprised by how many people were excited to yell it out. When we came into the finish we even got a callout from Carissa, which again, was not the intention. We are NOT the "I want to be on the big screen for our costume" people, so it was an interesting morning.

 

[Herding_Cats]

Learning my lesson from last year, I'm trying to decide on how I want to approach my winter training. Winter training is either starting TODAY or tomorrow because the more days I take off, the more likely it is for me to not get re-started until April.

So.

Option 1: Lifting only. I'm debating on canceling/renewing my BODi subscription to get the free year, and doing something like 80Day (an hour/day, 6 days/week) or another similar program with a longer daily workout block.

Option 2: Lifting AND a little bit of running. That would be something like P90X3 (30min/day, 5 or 6 days/week), 21Day Fix/MBF, OR something completely new with Caroline Girvan's IRON series on youtube (30ish min/day 5 days/week) and hop on the tread a couple of days each week for 30-45min.

Option 3: Running AND a little bit of lifting. Probably some sort of Higdon HM plan, and 3 days of short lifting sessions (30min or less) per week.

Option 4: Be crazy. This would mean doing like.....80Day, with some modifications, and ALSO doing some sort of still-beefy-for-me running plan (likely a Higdon HM something)

Why does it matter which one I pick? Well, during spring break we are going on a cruise, and I booked us a VRBO house that is 10min away from a HM/5k race. I convinced DH that I needed something to train for over the winter so I could ideally avoid a repeat experience with seasonal depression. So that house is booked and paid for. Now, I haven't registered for the race yet, and there's a pretty good chance DS2 and possibly DS3 would come and run the 5k that morning. Do I train for the half? Do I just do a little running and run the 5k? Do I try to PR either of those distances? I basically have 10 weeks to work with here. Once April hits, our schedule will go sideways again with 4 sports schedules to contend with, so now is the time to do something big if that's what I want to do.

I'm still refereeing for another month-ish, and after seeing how November and Decemberwent, I'm 100% ok with calling a night of reffing equal to a 60ish minute easy run, and would not double running with reffing on the same day.

(Side note, I feel pretty much "normal" post-Dopey already, because I didn't push my paces in any way on any of the days.)