Disney Princess Half Marathon
Finishers: 11,091
March 5, 2010
Prior to deciding to run this race, I hadn't done much distance running since my high school cross country days. When I went to college, I did my best to keep a constant running schedule about 2-3 miles once or twice a week on top of my other training and intramurals. The idea of running another half marathon had never crossed my mind.
One day I was out running around campus with Kirby Turnage and we ran into Mary Cate Dukes and Victoria Hinkle outside of the Village dorms. Through conversing while running, they told me they were running the Disney Princess Half and wanted to know if I would sign up with them. I laughed and said no way and then we continued down Magnolia.
I talked to them a few more times after that initial invite and slowly the idea starting creeping into the "good idea" section of my brain. I looked into training schedules and the race itself and with a very strict 12 week training schedule, I decided to pull the trigger.
So on Friday after class, we loaded up the car and head south to Orlando. Mary Cate, Amber, Victoria and I stocked up the snacks and made our way on the road down to the Dukes household who would be hosting us for the weekend. We got into town fairly late and just went almost right to bed after taking with Mary Cate's mom.
March 6, 2010
The packet pickup was at ESPN World of Sports so we head that direction with Mrs. Dukes. It wasn't even race day and I was already nervous just walking in to the convention center. We got to pick our character during our sign up so I think we were pretty split between Cinderella and Ariel in our group. Mary Cate's younger sister Margaret was running with us as well. After picking up our packets, we made a quick trip by the local goodwill to buy some sweatshirts because we heard it was going to be chilly in the morning.
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| The only photo I have from this weekend....I swear I ran |
March 7, 2010
We woke up super early and Mrs. Dukes pulled together some breakfast for us to eat in the car. We got on the road a bit dilerious and headed towards Disney -- or so we thought. I will admit that it was more than likely me who gave us the wrong directions and let us go way far in the wrong direction on the highway. I finally had us pull off the highway and turn around to rush back in the other direction. My bad.
We still got into the park with plenty of time and made our way through the weird back alleys of Disney to the start line. I'm glad we had sweatshirts because it was pretty cold. We decided since none of us had really trained together and we all had different paces that we would just all run our own race and split up to go to our corrals.
I was wearing a tyedye shirt and a tiara (no joke - I have no clue where any of these pictures are) so I would be easy for my dad to spot. Once the gun went off, I ditched my sweatshirt but kept the gloves and enjoyed the cool morning. I had a lot of adrenaline going and more than likely went out faster than necessary.
So we started and ran around the outside of Epcot and then on to the highways of Disney. They had princesses and other characters and scenes set up all along the way. I saw dad right away at Mile 1 and was excited to be feeling good -- Mile 1, good start. We ran from Epcot to Magic Kingdom where we got to run through the park a little and then the castle before heading back out onto the road.
This was probably around 8 when I am running by one of the resorts with the monorail on my left and all of a sudden I see dad running down the hill with his camera out trying to snap action photos screaming my name. I was thankfully still feeling good even though things started to get boring again since we were back on the Disney highways.
We made the turn at Mile 10 and the Epcot ball was far off in the distance like a Mile an a half away. Once we got to Epcot it was only 1.5 miles to the finish. I felt like we were running in circles in the park and not getting anywhere close to the finish. But thankfully it came and I was lucky enough to easily find Mary Cate and Margaret who had crushed the race in record time. Victoria found us not much later along with my dad who did indeed take pictures but they were on an actual camera so where those printed picture are....one day I hope they turn up.
We went back to the Dukes house to clean up before getting back on the road. We all were exhausted driving back to Atlanta and I was worthless the rest of the evening in bed. Cooper brought me Sonic and I stayed in bed all night. Tough day!
2 states down, 48 more to go!
#DREAMBIG
