Day 7 - 13.1 Miles

Today I ran the Disney Half Marathon. I entered the Goofy Challenge - Half Marathon today, Marathon tomorrow. My strategy for this race was to pace myself and not blow all my energy on the Half Marathon because I knew the next day would be far more challenging. I did my best to store my energy: Started off slow and kept a steady pace throughout the course. Then I picked it up for the last 3 miles. I finished at 2:03.

This race was very interesting. Normally so many personal thoughts swirl through my head in a long distance run but this time, I was too preoccupied by the race itself and the highs/lows of the course.

High - VERY well organized. There were 25,000 participants in today's Half Marathon and everything went smoothly. Each mile was well marked. Tons of bathrooms so no one had to wait. Great finisher medals. Also great fireworks display at the beginning of the race.

Low - The race starts at 5:30 am. All runners needed to be there by 4 am. We stayed only 10 mins away from the Disney parks but I had to leave the hotel by 3 am because they were expecting a lot of traffic getting into the park. The only perks about starting this early is that you have no sunlight and the temp is in the 40s - my ideal running conditions. Also, Steve called at 3 am to give me a pep talk :)

High - Flat course. A few minor hills but they were very short hills and not steep at all.

Low - The advertise this as the Disney Half Marathon and the Disney Marathon. I was so excited because this is a highly publicized race that draws a lot of runners from around the world. I was also excited to run through the Disney parks. That was hardly the case. Out of the 13.1 miles, only 2 miles was through the parks. The rest was running from one parking lot to another parking lot. We all know how big these parking lots are - Huge. So I only saw Magic Kingdom from Miles 5 -6.5 and then Epcot from Mile 12.6 to the finish. Very disappointing.

High - Great energy through the crowd. Lots of runners in costumes. Celebrity runner: Ryan Sutter from the Bachelorette was running and Trista was there to cheer.

Low - Forgive me if my next few comments offend you. There were so many runners that didn't show an ounce of runner's etiquette. I'm a stickler for running in a proper corral. It drives me nuts when people put themselves in a fast corral and they start walking Mile 2. There were 8 corrals for the race - Corral #1 being the fastest and Corral #8 being the slowest. I was in Corral #4. Each corral had 7 minutes before the next corral started. So basically this means the corral ahead of me should be quite a distance ahead of me in the beginning because they are technically faster than me and they started 7 minutes before me. I should not be passing any walkers in front of me. That was not the case. People were walking by Mile 2. If you are injured, I understand. If you're in a faster corral, you shouldn't be walking at all. There were so many walkers in this race. You had to zig zag around these annoying people.

Another annoying thing about these folks was that they would jam up the course to take pics with the Disney characters. Even though we didn't run through the parks, they had Disney characters at every mile so runners would form a line on the course to take a picture. These lines were anywhere from 20-50 people deep. The Pirates of the Caribbean picture opp was really popular because they got to take pics with a pirate on the ship. Ummm, unless it's Johnny Depp giving out kisses on the mouth, there should be no reason to stop to take pics during a race. You should come back to the park AFTER the race and take pics.

Finally, when we did get to the Magic Kingdom, runners would just stop in the middle of the course and start taking pictures of the castle with their phone. I actually ran into the back of a runner because he just stopped out of nowhere. So needless to say, these things made the course a bit annoying. Now I'm TOTALLY okay if a runner wants to walk and take pics.....JUST STICK WITH A SLOWER CORRAL PLEASE!!!

Would I recommend this race to people? Sure, why not? It's neat to say you ran the Disney "course". However, our Chicago friends and East Coast friends have all experienced amazing courses in cities that have fantastic fan support and high level of energy. The Disney race pales in comparison to the races that all of us have finished. But then again, those courses didn't have a pirate ship with pirates waiting to take your picture. Time to rest for tomorrow's marathon. I can't wait to cruise the parking lots again!!