Disney Half Marathon 2009

It's finally here. The Disney Half.

So, my mom and I decided to do the half after I ran the Goofy last year. We did two long runs of 8 miles each together. They weren't particularly fast, but they beat the sweeper time. Still, we were horribly undertrained.

My mom picked up my packet for me. That's always highly stressful- you have to get your packet by Friday night at 8:00. We usually leave around 1:00 and it's about a four hour drive. I was able to actually let people get out of the car for a bathroom break once I knew my packet was accounted for!

After doing all the night before prep, and then helping my mom with hers (which throwaway clothing did she want to bring, which shorts would she wear for the race, etc), we went to bed. I dumped the baby by Ted at around 3 a.m. and went outside my mom's door. We joined forces, and headed for the bus (after a quick bathroom break- never, ever give up the last opportunity for a real bathroom!) I was dragging all of our stuff since I was to be our sherpa.

We wander past the red carpet and over near the WISH people. As much as I like them, I can't really face talking to anyone at 4 a.m. We kill time looking at the band, the merchandise tent, etc. Did I mention it was freezing cold?! We both had on sweatshirts and gloves and sat on a Princess blanket that Emma decided was too "baby" to keep.

On a quick port-a-potty trip, we bonded with a woman who'd flown in from Maine. She had done a half at home but was 30 minutes over the sweep time for Disney. I told her to get near the front of her corral and look for the bikes. I liked her, and hoped she'd make it.

Finally, we headed to our corral. Silly me, I put my mom's time down as whatever the fastest time is that doesn't need proof. Had we been properly trained, it would have been a reasonable time, so I don't feel bad about being too far up. It bought us a little wiggle room. We abandoned our blanket, though I felt kind of attached to it.

The fireworks start, and we are off! We're doing somewhere in the neighborhood of 12-13 minute miles, so not bad at all. My mom is alternating between euphoria, panic, and general grumpiness. I'm just babbling cause there's nothing better than a Disney race!

We took pictures of the mile markers, even though they weren't new. I was disappointed to not see the "Choose your Groove" sign, but they had the music playing, so we went disco. Finally, we hit the Magic Kingdom. The spectators are crazy as always. I had to take a picture with Chip and Dale in Tomorrowland, then we found Alice and Piglet. We took pictures in front of the castle- good thing since the photographer missed us completely! (Somehow in our training, I didn't emphasize the need to anticipate the photographers and position yourself well- major oversight).

We'd been very strong through the Magic Kingdom. Unfortunately, our lack of long runs caught up to us- not so much from an endurance perspective, but from a wardrobe perspective. My mom had to stop to adjust her shoe/sock at least once per mile from Tomorrowland on. She'd have known that those socks sucked had we run longer in them, but such is life.

Hmmm... so miles 7-11 are a blur of photos (Mary Poppins), a stop at the port-a-potties, yelling for random WISHers, giving strangers Tylenol and bandaids(remember, sherpas are prepared for all emergencies). Because we lost a lot of time with shoe/sock stops, we gradually got in with a much slower crowd. I was very proud that I could stay focused- we said we were doing the race to finish and we were not going to worry about our finish time. I almost lost my focus once, when the old guy with the jazzed up walker passed us, but once we got past him, we were ok.

Mile 11 or so is an awful ramp/bridge with the sun beating down on you, but you can see Epcot. It's up towards the countries and then back down past the Epcot ball... then through the really long stretch of parking lot to the finish line. I made my mom do the cheesy holding hands up in the air across the finish thing, cause as Harry would say "I had to." We got our medals! (Time was somewhere around 3:23, but at least 20-30 minutes of that was lost to the shoe/sock crisis, bathroom breaks, pictures, etc).

We didn't wear our medals in the parks because the ribbon is scratchy but did wear our t-shirts. We hit MK and Epcot and chatted with anyone who made the mistake of asking about the race. It was great fun. My mom totally gets it now- you can be thoroughly miserable by mile 11, limping and exhausted all afternoon, and trying to pick your next race at dinner.

Oh, and the woman from Maine in the port-a-potty line? Would you believe we walked out of the massage tent, looked up, and there she was? She had a big smile and her medal. That's one of my all time favorite Disney race memories.