Rounding the corner onto Main Street at Walt Disney World, math teacher Alicia Lahood and her sister, Cydney Granger, pressed on toward Cinderella’s castle. Despite waking up at 1 a.m. and the toll of running their fourth race in as many days, one driving force kept the duo motivated: the money they were raising to give children with cancer hope.
From Jan. 8 to 12, Lahood and Granger tackled the Dopey Challenge, consisting of a 5K, a 10K, a half marathon and a full marathon. That’s 48.6 miles, all in four days. The sisters took on this challenge to raise money for Kellsie’s Hope Foundation, an organization dedicated to providing hope to families and their children battling cancer. So far, the foundation has granted 137 wishes to children who relapsed with cancer.
“My sister and I both have really rare autoimmune diseases,” Lahood said. “I ran the Disney Princess half [marathon] in February of 2022, and I saw this group of people out on the course, and they were in these bright lime green shirts, and I was like, ‘I wonder what they are.’ So, I started researching, and we’re like, ‘That’d be a really cool way to give back.’”
Between 2022 and 2023, Lahood and Granger raised $10,000 for the foundation. This school year, the pair was determined to take it to the next level, and have raised $14,100 as of Jan. 28.
“This year, we really took it up,” Lahood said. “So our goal is $15,000 by the end of the run season.”
Before the duo could take on the Dopey Challenge, they needed to prepare. The sisters began training in June and continued until the first race day.
“We’re running pretty much three, four, sometimes five times a week,” Lahood said. “Making sure that we’re not going to go die on the course.”
Starting the day of their marathon early, the pair made their way to their corral at about 3 a.m. With DJs blasting music and the sounds of other runners around them, the two had to mentally prepare for the 4:30 a.m. race start time.
“It’s just, you’re gonna run 26 miles, so it’s just that being aware of what you’re doing,” Lahood said. “Nobody is really talkative. You just kind of sit there, but the marathon morning is really, really competitive, which we’re not doing it for competition. We’re doing it for awareness.”
The marathon course for the race took runners through all four Disney parks, Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, allowing them to see everything else the property had to offer.
“We start in the Epcot parking lot,” Lahood said. “It’s a lot of back roads that you didn’t even know existed at Disney. They have DJs along the course. They had 25 different characters you could stop at. There’s something at least every quarter mile, so it keeps you going.”
Even with the magical route Disney had to offer throughout the race, the final stretch is what stood out the most to Lahood.
“The finish line, it’s so cool,” she said. “You loop back to Epcot, and you finish the rest of Epcot where the finish line is.”
After a draining but fulfilling weekend, Lahood was back in the classroom on Jan. 13 teaching math equations while recovering from the toll the race took on her body.
“I’m definitely sore,” she said. “I can feel that I ran over 48 miles the last four days, but as long as you eat and drink your water.”
For Lahood and her sister, the exhaustion and sore muscles were worth it: the race wasn’t about crossing the finish line: it was about raising awareness and making a difference in others’ lives.
