Disney Magic!
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| Our happy Princess at Epcot |
Anyway, back to Disney and my 1/2 marathon tale. It was a whirlwind 4 days of getting up early to catch a plane, then getting up earlier to catch a bus to the starting line, meeting my local "Team", running, shuffling, eating, riding the Test Track... so many things to fit in. So beware, this will probably be a long post with lots of pictures. Be patient with me :) There is a cool surprise at the end for those who stick with my long-windedness.
We left Cincy airport at around 9 am on Friday (the 7th), in 20 degree weather, and landed in Orlando a little over 2 hours later with weather in the 60's. No complaints there! All of the Team In Training participants for Disney (over 2,000) were primarily staying at the Disney Coronado Springs Resort; we hopped the shuttle there and grabbed lunch and checked in. I had to then hop another shuttle over to the Expo to pick up my race packet, and then zoom back to the hotel for the 5:30 pm start of the traditional Team In Training "Pasta Party", a pre-race evening meal to all get together, celebrate our participation, and get some final inspiration for our run. It was a terrific meal - the emcee was Runner's World's writer, John "The Penguin" Bingham, who writes a monthly column called "The Penguin Chronicles", detailing his back-of-the-pack running. He was awesome, very funny and entertaining. The 2,000+ Team In Training participants in the Disney marathon weekend raised over $4 million for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society! Wow! That is a lot of research money... Once again, my most heartfelt thanks to all of my family and friends who contributed to my fundraising.
It was great during this trip to be able to meet (some for the first time), and get to know better a lot of the runners and walkers from my local "Tri State Chapter" of Team in Training. What a great group of folks! People from all walks and stages of life, many of them doing their first 1/2 marathon or full marathon, and one brave soul (an experienced runner), a mom like myself, doing the "Goofy", which is a very special Disney term for doing both the 1/2 marathon on Saturday PLUS the full marathon on Sunday. Very Goofy indeed! Those folks get a special Goofy medal for being so crazy ;). Here's a picture of the Tri State Chapter of TnT, and above is one of Greg, Abby & I after a very great pasta meal and some inspiration from leukemia patients and survivors like Abby.
Race day Saturday: the team met up at 3:15 (yes, that's a.m.!) to catch the shuttle bus to the starting area, which was in the Epcot parking lot. We were to the staging area by around 4 am. Supposedly they wanted us in our corrals at 4 am also; however, a group of us sat around in the staging area until at least 5 am (we were all in corrals like "G" and "H" that had a longer wait). I started making the long, slow trek to my corral around 5, and it took me at least half an hour to get there. Corral is appropriate! Walking there in that mass of people felt like what being in a cattle chute must feel like! :) Luckily, lots of time by the time I got to my corral to use the porta-potty... I stood around and enjoyed the spectacle of the wheelchair starts (kicked off at 5:35 am), the A(5:40 am), B, C, D, E, and F corrals all starting. Disney does it right! We were rocking to music, there were fireworks launched for every corral start, Minnie and Mickey were there at the starting line with the emcees. Definitely very entertaining! And very luckily for all of us the weather was perfect. It was about 44 at 4 am, but we all had cast-off (i.e., bought at Goodwill) sweats, sweatshirts, gloves and hats to discard once we got running. Blurry cell phone picture below of the fireworks at the start, and the humoungous crowd in just my corral. I think I was G, which started around 6:35 am. We were off!
Probably the most difficult part of this race was running in the crowd. When I ran the Flying Pig, it was very crowded at the start, but the course widenened and the chunks of people thinnned out within the first mile. Here at Disney, though, I zigzagged, tried to pass, and ran in the grass for probably the first three miles, and still only managed to get about 11-minute miles in. After those first few miles, though, I just had to kick back and accept it; I had thoughts of coming in with a 2:15 1/2 marathon, and it just didn't happen (I finished in 2:29; my three nervous potty stops along the way certainly didn't help either!). The crowds occasionally got thinner, but running through the parks (the coolest part!) meant running on pretty narrow coned-off paths, so it was still really congested. But it was so worth it to go through Disney parks! Below is a blurry cell phone pic of the crowd coming out of Cinderella's castle. I stopped to get my picture taken by one of the pros along the course (the sports photog people); unfortunately, I have my eyes closed. Not sure that one's going to go up on my wall!
And of course, Disney being Disney, the entertainment along the way way very good too. Music, live bands, things about every mile along the way to keep you entertained. What a gorgeous day! I crossed the finish line, collected my Donald Duck medal, grabbed a Diet Coke (had a serious craving!), a blueberry muffin and a protein bar, and hopped on my shuttle bus back to a nice warm shower and a good nap!
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| Finish line behind me! Done! |
We were lucky to be visited the afternoon after the race by Greg's Dad and step-mom, who live a couple of hours away in Tampa. After my nice, refreshing nap, we headed to Downtown Disney for supper, shopping, Giardelli ice cream sundaes, sightseeing, and general silliness. Ahoy, mateys!
And the next day, Sunday, Greg and Abby and I spent the day at Epcot. Sunday was full marathon day, so by the time we got to the park, the full was still going on, and we got to cheer the crowds who, by that time, had done 25+ miles and were on the home stretch on their way to the finish line in the Epcot parking lot. We rode all of our favorites, ate some really good food, and saw some neat new things we hadn't seen on our previous visits. I was a little footsore :), but we managed to stick it out to see the fireworks and light show at the end of the day.
Then on Monday it was sleep in, eat a leisurely breakfast, check out, and catch our shuttle back to the airport! Goodbye Orlando, and thanks for the nice, warm break. Back to the land of snow and ice :) Maybe we'll see you next winter again, and maybe Greg will decide to be Goofy!
P.S. OK, now that my 1/2 marathon is over, I can let the cat out of the bag... ;) Remember that picture up near the top, of me and Greg and Abby at the pre-race pasta party? Look closely at my tummy. No, that is not a beer belly from drinking too much post-running brew. That is my "passenger" on this run. Greg and I had a very happy surprise about one week before Thanksgiving, when we realized that I was expecting! Not to get too in-depth with the whole story, but this is something that, about 5 years ago, the doctors told us would not be happening for us. So basically, we accepted that, decided that our family of 3 was the perfect size and was what God wanted for us, and moved on. However, He had another idea in mind for us, just a little later in our lives than we had anticipated! My pregnancy is the reason I dropped from the full marathon to the half marathon. I was 15 weeks along during the race, and I imagine that fact contributed to my 3 potty breaks along the racecourse :) The new Baby Fasnacht is due on June 30th, and so far things are going quite well; everything is very healthy for both me and... him? her? We will know soon! Thanks again to all of my family, friends, co-workers, etc., who have been so kind and supportive.
