Every January, thousands of people travel to Walt Disney World Resort to participate in the Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend. The marathon weekend consists of a 5k, 10k, half-marathon, and a full marathon. For those runners who want to run more than one race, there are also two challenges — the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge and the Dopey Challenge. The Goofy challenge is when the runner runs the half-marathon and then also runs the full marathon the next day. The Dopey Challenge is a beast where runners compete in all four marathon weekend races.
One woman headed down to the Most Magical Place on Earth, ready to participate in the Dopey Challenge, and she ended up making history. Brittany Charboneau ran the 5k, 10k, half-marathon, and full marathon, and won all of them. Brittany spoke to the Orlando Sentinel about her historic run, saying:
The 33-year-old aspiring Olympian from Denver said she decided to tackle the Disney races after suffering an injury in training and enduring a difficult run at the Boston Marathon in October. She wanted something fun to look forward to after a tough race.
“I feel amazing,” she said Sunday. “This was such a mental-win weekend for me. My goal was never to win all of these. My goal was to go out, wear costumes and have an amazing time…The reason I wanted to do this is to remind people you can have big goals, but you can have fun with it.”
A lot of the runners who participate in Disney marathons love to dress up for the races, and Brittany is no exception. For the 5k, she dressed up as Queen Elsa from Frozen and went as Bing Bong from Inside Out for the 1ok. For the half-marathon, she decided to dress up as Joy, also from Inside Out, and wrapped up her marathon weekend as Emma Stone’s Cruella De Vil from the 2020 film, Cruella.
Brittany’s run is even more amazing considering she didn’t even know if she would be able to compete. Right before Christmas, Brittany tested positive for COVID-19, despite the fact that she was both vaccinated and boosted. However, she was able to recover in time and was cleared to run the races.
Brittany is a full-time runner and is currently training for the 2024 Olympic trials.
Please join us in saying, congratulations on your historic runs, Brittany!
