During a week in which I finally finished our most recent trip report, read all about it here, and many of you likely thought you’d at least get a little break from our posts, I jump right back into the mix with possibly my most anticipated pre-trip report I’ve had the pleasure of sharing with all of you.
PREAMBLE
I have made mention in several of our recent reports that I have pretty much become obsessed with running over the last two years. At first, it was just something I was doing to keep active and feel better about myself. When I first started, I’d struggle to get through 2km of straight running but I kept at it and started to see results as the weeks went by. Soon enough I had worked my way up to 5k jaunts and eventually worked my way up to 10k runs.
As I continued to enjoy hitting the pavement and the results started to show, running had become a major part of my weekly routine. So much so that I was making sure to carve out time to run on family vacations or business trips.
It wasn’t until last fall that I set my sights on training for and completing my first half marathon. When I first started that seemed like an impossible feat, but after a year of solid results, I felt it was within grasp. I thought my local half marathon would be the obvious starting point but I’m talking with Kelly, we decided that a WDW trip focused on the marathon weekend would be a great motivator to wanna train hard and accomplish a big goal all while enjoying another visit to the World.
With that, we started planning a trip that would be just the two of us, no kids this time, to make this happen.
THE TEAM
Not long after making the decision to pull this together, we were out for dinner with our best friends, Mike and Kerri, and we told them about the big plan to run this half marathon in Disney.
They, too, are big Disney fans but never in a million years would I expect them to say “that sounds so cool, we should do it too!”
With that comment, the conversation got pretty serious and not long after it was decided that they would join us on the trip and Mike would start training to run the half with me. I was pretty excited to have my best buddy commit to this, even if the task ahead is pretty daunting.
Not only did Mike step up, but Kerri somehow convinced Kelly to run the 5k with her to kick off the week. I couldn’t believe Kelly said yes but to her credit, she’s been running regularly to ensure she finishes this race in a respectable time!
Mike and Kerri will be staying at All-Star Music Resort and will both be making their first visit to the World in several decades. Everyone is pretty fired up about the trip and we already had an early-summer running summit to start building out the plans for our trip.
We will be packing a lot of action and not a lot of sleep into a few pretty compact days but it should make for an extremely memorable visit.
WARM-UP
With the wheels now in motion, we started figuring out where we wanted to stay. Because we wanted to save up some of our DVC points, we felt like renting points from David’s DVC was the way to go. As February 2019 approached, we narrowed our resort selection to our favourite property on the resort, Wilderness Lodge. We decided that we’d try for Boulder Ridge instead of Copper Creek.
When the 11-month window opened up, we put in our request and within hours we had received word that there were points available and a booking secured at Boulder Ridge if we wanted to move ahead. We were pretty pumped to finalize the booking on a deluxe studio for the two of us to enjoy from January 8-12, 2020.
In preparing for the trip I did a lot of research behind when you can register for the races and how quickly things tend to book up. Sounded like the 5 and 10k races sold out very quickly so we had to be on the ball when the registration dates opened up. Just so happens that DVC members get advanced registration which took place while we were at Aulani and with the time change, I would have needed to set an alarm for 1 am to be ready.
By the time I woke up, all available space for the 5k was booked so we had to wait for general public. Thankfully when that day came a week later, we were able to secure the 5k for both Kelly and Kerri and the half marathon for me. Mike has yet to pull the trigger but has a little time to finalize that as I see there is still the option to register for this race. I keep bugging him to register so it’s only a matter of time.
THE ROUTE
Needless to say, we will all be making the trip from Edmonton down to Orlando and at the moment the plan is to hop on the redeye from Edmonton to Toronto, then down to Orlando. If all goes according to plan, we will arrive on January 8th around 1030 am. From there we will make our way directly to the run expo to pick up our race kits before heading to our hotels to drop off whatever carry on luggage we brought with us.
We will meet back up at EPCOT for our first park day and try to squeeze in as much as we can. The ladies will be running the 5k bright and early the next morning so we’ve made reservations at Tutto Italia at 630 pm so they can carb up!
January 9th will be a very early morning as the buses to the 5k start transporting runners at 330 am. Once the girls go the distance we will head back to the hotel to shower and change before bolting over for a day at Hollywood Studios and our first experience with Galaxy’s Edge! We will wrap up our evening with reservations at the Sci-Fi which even though we pushed hard for the 50’s, Mike and Kerri selected.
January 10th will be a full day from rope drop to park close at Magic Kingdom with reservations for a late breakfast at the Crystal Palace and a chance for Mike and me to carbo-load at the Plaza for dinner. As we planned this trip, the most unlikely thing I thought I’d hear Mike say was he needed to do a character breakfast while we were there and ideally that breakfast would include an omelet station. Done and done!
January 11th is the day of the half marathon and will be another very early morning as we make our way to the starting position at EPCOT. Neither of us has run this distance before and since we are very much novice “racers” we will be in the corral of runners who expect to finish at 2 hours and 45 minutes or more. Ideally, we want to be done in 2:30 but we shall see what happens!
After the craziness of the race, we will head back to shower and change before making our way to the final park of the trip, Animal Kingdom. I cannot wait to introduce them to Pandora and Mike has already made it very clear that he is super nervous for Everest!
Our long day will conclude with a trip to Disney Springs to have a celebratory dinner at the Boathouse. Having become obsessed with the WDW Radio Show Podcast of late, and hearing Lou Mongello rave about how amazing the Boathouse is, I felt like this was a great way to end the trip.
The next morning we will load up and head back to the airport to make our way home. Hopefully, both Mike and I will be able to walk through the terminals but at least there will be other options available to us if we just can muster up the strength!
We still have quite a bit to do in the time we have before we leave with the next big items including securing flights, buying our park tickets and booking our FastPass+ reservations.
And I guess we still have a lot of KM’s to log as we build up to our race days!
I look forward to keeping you all in the loop as more of these plans fall into place and as a first-time marathoner at WDW, any insight you have is most appreciated!
PREAMBLE
I have made mention in several of our recent reports that I have pretty much become obsessed with running over the last two years. At first, it was just something I was doing to keep active and feel better about myself. When I first started, I’d struggle to get through 2km of straight running but I kept at it and started to see results as the weeks went by. Soon enough I had worked my way up to 5k jaunts and eventually worked my way up to 10k runs.
As I continued to enjoy hitting the pavement and the results started to show, running had become a major part of my weekly routine. So much so that I was making sure to carve out time to run on family vacations or business trips.
It wasn’t until last fall that I set my sights on training for and completing my first half marathon. When I first started that seemed like an impossible feat, but after a year of solid results, I felt it was within grasp. I thought my local half marathon would be the obvious starting point but I’m talking with Kelly, we decided that a WDW trip focused on the marathon weekend would be a great motivator to wanna train hard and accomplish a big goal all while enjoying another visit to the World.
With that, we started planning a trip that would be just the two of us, no kids this time, to make this happen.
THE TEAM
Not long after making the decision to pull this together, we were out for dinner with our best friends, Mike and Kerri, and we told them about the big plan to run this half marathon in Disney.
They, too, are big Disney fans but never in a million years would I expect them to say “that sounds so cool, we should do it too!”
With that comment, the conversation got pretty serious and not long after it was decided that they would join us on the trip and Mike would start training to run the half with me. I was pretty excited to have my best buddy commit to this, even if the task ahead is pretty daunting.
Not only did Mike step up, but Kerri somehow convinced Kelly to run the 5k with her to kick off the week. I couldn’t believe Kelly said yes but to her credit, she’s been running regularly to ensure she finishes this race in a respectable time!
Mike and Kerri will be staying at All-Star Music Resort and will both be making their first visit to the World in several decades. Everyone is pretty fired up about the trip and we already had an early-summer running summit to start building out the plans for our trip.
We will be packing a lot of action and not a lot of sleep into a few pretty compact days but it should make for an extremely memorable visit.
WARM-UP
With the wheels now in motion, we started figuring out where we wanted to stay. Because we wanted to save up some of our DVC points, we felt like renting points from David’s DVC was the way to go. As February 2019 approached, we narrowed our resort selection to our favourite property on the resort, Wilderness Lodge. We decided that we’d try for Boulder Ridge instead of Copper Creek.
When the 11-month window opened up, we put in our request and within hours we had received word that there were points available and a booking secured at Boulder Ridge if we wanted to move ahead. We were pretty pumped to finalize the booking on a deluxe studio for the two of us to enjoy from January 8-12, 2020.
In preparing for the trip I did a lot of research behind when you can register for the races and how quickly things tend to book up. Sounded like the 5 and 10k races sold out very quickly so we had to be on the ball when the registration dates opened up. Just so happens that DVC members get advanced registration which took place while we were at Aulani and with the time change, I would have needed to set an alarm for 1 am to be ready.
By the time I woke up, all available space for the 5k was booked so we had to wait for general public. Thankfully when that day came a week later, we were able to secure the 5k for both Kelly and Kerri and the half marathon for me. Mike has yet to pull the trigger but has a little time to finalize that as I see there is still the option to register for this race. I keep bugging him to register so it’s only a matter of time.
THE ROUTE
Needless to say, we will all be making the trip from Edmonton down to Orlando and at the moment the plan is to hop on the redeye from Edmonton to Toronto, then down to Orlando. If all goes according to plan, we will arrive on January 8th around 1030 am. From there we will make our way directly to the run expo to pick up our race kits before heading to our hotels to drop off whatever carry on luggage we brought with us.
We will meet back up at EPCOT for our first park day and try to squeeze in as much as we can. The ladies will be running the 5k bright and early the next morning so we’ve made reservations at Tutto Italia at 630 pm so they can carb up!
January 9th will be a very early morning as the buses to the 5k start transporting runners at 330 am. Once the girls go the distance we will head back to the hotel to shower and change before bolting over for a day at Hollywood Studios and our first experience with Galaxy’s Edge! We will wrap up our evening with reservations at the Sci-Fi which even though we pushed hard for the 50’s, Mike and Kerri selected.
January 10th will be a full day from rope drop to park close at Magic Kingdom with reservations for a late breakfast at the Crystal Palace and a chance for Mike and me to carbo-load at the Plaza for dinner. As we planned this trip, the most unlikely thing I thought I’d hear Mike say was he needed to do a character breakfast while we were there and ideally that breakfast would include an omelet station. Done and done!
January 11th is the day of the half marathon and will be another very early morning as we make our way to the starting position at EPCOT. Neither of us has run this distance before and since we are very much novice “racers” we will be in the corral of runners who expect to finish at 2 hours and 45 minutes or more. Ideally, we want to be done in 2:30 but we shall see what happens!
After the craziness of the race, we will head back to shower and change before making our way to the final park of the trip, Animal Kingdom. I cannot wait to introduce them to Pandora and Mike has already made it very clear that he is super nervous for Everest!
Our long day will conclude with a trip to Disney Springs to have a celebratory dinner at the Boathouse. Having become obsessed with the WDW Radio Show Podcast of late, and hearing Lou Mongello rave about how amazing the Boathouse is, I felt like this was a great way to end the trip.
The next morning we will load up and head back to the airport to make our way home. Hopefully, both Mike and I will be able to walk through the terminals but at least there will be other options available to us if we just can muster up the strength!
We still have quite a bit to do in the time we have before we leave with the next big items including securing flights, buying our park tickets and booking our FastPass+ reservations.
And I guess we still have a lot of KM’s to log as we build up to our race days!
I look forward to keeping you all in the loop as more of these plans fall into place and as a first-time marathoner at WDW, any insight you have is most appreciated!
