The Disneyland Half Marathon is 10 years old - race report

[LindsayLoves]

Hi all! I’m Lindsay, a runner + a Disney fan = runDisney fan




I call New York City home and I love using runDisney events as an excuse for a Disney vacation. My husband is not a Disney fan so my past two trips have been with my brother and his boyfriend. We all went on a weeklong trip to WDW this January for the marathon weekend so I could do the Dopey Challenge. I knew I wanted to get my hands on the Coast 2 Coast medal this year so I jumped in for the Dumbo Double Dare and the 10th Anniversary of the Disneyland Half in order to bring that special medal home. It was a first Disneyland trip for all of us.



Thursday – We arrived at LAX around 11am on a nonstop flight from JFK. Took a quick 45 minute Uber ride over to our hotel, the Sheraton Park hotel, which is located right near the convention center and about a mile walk to the main gate area. We selected this hotel because it was free using SPG points but in the end we were all very happy with hotel and its location.

Expo – We walked over to the Disneyland Hotel around 1pm, the expo had opened at 10am that morning and I was worried that there would still be the notorious long lines I have heard about for DL expos. I didn’t technically *have* to go to the expo that day since I was not running the Friday morning 5k, but I wanted to get it out of the way with before getting caught up in the parks and not wanting to break away to go back.

Bib and shirt pick up were a breeze. We all got these nice plastic DL 10th Anniversary luggage tags which was a lot nicer than the Goofy phone wallet they were giving out at marathon weekend in January.

I was doing the Dumbo Double Dare and completing the Coast to Coast Challenge so I got my C2C wristband which I would have to wear through the end of the half on Sunday which seemed more annoying than it ended up being. I definitely did not get my photo taken with my bib to confirm my identity as part of the DDD, the women giving my bib mumbled something about it at the end of our conversation but I was just too caught up with everything going on that I skipped this step.

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Then it was time to make our way to the official merch area. For those of you who are not familiar the official merch area for the Disneyland races it is at the far end of the expo hall and due to the small size they limit access. The expo opens at 10am and some people start lining up as early as 6am (seriously). We were there around 2pm so when we went upstairs to the holding area in another ballroom they gave us a wristband to prove that we had waited in line and told it would be around 25 minutes. We were in a bit of a time crunch because we had a 3:00pm lunch reservation at Carthay Circle for World of Color fastpass dining. We made it out of the ballroom and down to the expo floor in about 20 minutes, once our wristbands were checked we were allowed to queue up to actually get inside the merch area. We were right next to the speaker area so we got to hear Jeff Galloway giving out advice for the race which sounded like it was geared towards people who have never put running shoes on their feet before, very basic stuff. But it was nice to listen to

I picked up a Coast to Coast t-shirt (which was made out of the exact same t-shirts at the ones we got in our race bags, but this one cost $37), two car magnets for my fridge, an event specific pint glass, and a DDD wide headband. We got in and out in 10 minutes.

Friday – the 5k happened but I didn’t run it. It was so nice knowing that I wouldn’t have to get up at 4am to run a race, I slept in until 6am and spent the day in the parks.

 

[LindsayLoves]

Saturday – Villans 10k

4am wake up for the 5:30am race start. I had laid my gear out the night before, and I would be reusing the Lotso running outfit I wore for the full marathon in January to go with the Villan theme (also in hopes of running into the bear himself on the course, fingers crossed)

Even though I had carefully studied the event guide I was a little nervous about getting to the start. I was out of the room by 4:20am and rode the elevator down with two other runners. Our hotel had bananas and water in the lobby for runners that morning which would’ve been nice to know before spending $3 for two bananas the night before at CVS. The other two runners in the elevator were also doing Coast to Coast and were running in Disneyland for the first time. So we made our way over together which was a nice way to ease my nerves, power in numbers, right?

Everyone knows that the charm of Disneyland is how close everything is and how small it is, this definitely goes for the races. The walk over from the hotel was the distance of the normal walk from the staging area to the start area in WDW. They also don’t make you pass through the staging area to get to the corrals; I bypassed the staging area both days and made my way towards my corral. I knew I wanted to stop at a port-o-potty along the way and as soon as I turned the corner after going through the first split for corrals A-B-C there was a small group of port-o-potties and wait for it…. there was NO line, I repeat NO line. This only happens to me when I get to a race an hour before it starts but somehow this happened 30 minutes before start time. Mind blown.

Getting up to corral A required about 3 different checks of my bib which I thought was a bit more thorough than what they do at WDW for the race. The pre-show was just starting with the usual rD announcers Rudy and Carissa reading the sponsor announcements and eventually doing a cute bit with Cruella Deville. Cruella made a joke about kidnapping the National Anthem signer so she sent out a guitar player named something like Baron Von Evil to play a very rock n’ roll version of the National Anthem on the guitar, it was excellent and a nice change of pace. I was only about 7 rows back from the start line which felt like I was too far up but I was sure to stay towards the side so others could pass if they wanted to.

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Samwise Gamgee Sean Astin stretching time.

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Cruella calling people out.

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National Anthem on the guitar!

Then the race just kind of started. Yes, there was a countdown but it wasn’t as grand as the fireworks and such that they do at WDW. Some people took off really quickly but I had no real goals for this race, other than to have fun and take lots of character photos. My real goal was to make it back to the hotel, shower, and back to the parks for rope drop at 8am.

I knew I wanted to run the first 2 miles outside of the parks at a pretty good clip so the character lines would be short once I made it inside the parks. Getting used to the raised reflectors in a road was a challenge but I quickly got the hang of it and did not eat it at any point. When I saw mile one coming in at 7:15 I realized I might be running a bit too fast especially because I didn’t start right at gun time. I felt good so I kept the pace up until we entered California Adventure where I put the brakes on hard when we reached Paradise Pier and infront of Toy Story Midway Mania and the character meet was Lotso. This was a must stop, I was dressed as Lotso meeting Lotso, very meta.

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Insert fast runner problems here: The problem with there being no lines for character photos was actually realizing that there was a character out for pictures. Sure Lotso was easy to spot because he’s big and pink but running through Hollywood Land I definitely passed Dr. Facilier because he was just there hanging out with no one taking pictures with him. I did stop for Prince John from Robin Hood because I haven’t seen him in a park since I was 5 at character dining in Cinderella’s Castle, seriously. Yay for rare villans! The next stops were Maleficent and the Red Queen, then Captain Hook and Smee, and finally Brer Fox and Brer Bear. Not a ton of characters but enough for a 10k.

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Thumb suckers unite!

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The final push through Downtown Disney was fun, with quite a few people out at 6:20am cheering. I didn’t really know where the finish line was but when I saw I would have a fairly decent time I kept pushing it. I definitely had some pep in my step at the finish line and thought how weird it was that I was crossing the finish line before the sun had really come up.

Race stats: 50:32 – 292/9045 overall, 72/5791 female, 20/1046 division

For about 2 seconds I thought that if I hadn’t stopped for the character photos I might have run a PR (48:57) but there is no way because those character stops were so short they maybe added a minute total. I was still very happy with my time because there has been no training this summer, yes I have run but nothing in terms of speed work, etc. I think I could definitely PR on this course in the future.

Spent the rest of the day in the parks and closed it out with an 8pm reservation at Naples in Downtown Disney to eat up for the next day. Pizza has become my pre-race meal of choice, and I will generally choose it over pasta any day. Despite the 45 minute for walk ups we were seated at a lovely outdoor patio table immediately thanks to our reservation. Note – if you want a BIG glass of wine for not a ton of money this is the place to go, the pours are quite generous and I enjoyed my pizza, calamari, and glass of super Tuscan.[/url]

 

[imagination30]

awesome report lindsay, one day i will get out west!!! .. , until them ill stick to wdw half marathon this year again! ..

 

[LindsayLoves]

awesome report lindsay, one day i will get out west!!! .. , until them ill stick to wdw half marathon this year again! ..

Thank you! I am so glad I finally made it to Disneyland, and of course I want to go back ASAP.

Nothing wrong with a trip to WDW, I keep wanting the marathon to fill up so I can stop playing the will I or won't I game with registering for it.

 

[LindsayLoves]

Sunday – Disneyland 10th Anniversary Half Marathon

I went with the same plan as yesterday waking up by 4am and leaving the room around 4:20. Again the gear was all out the night before and today I was running as Eve from Wall-E. I knew it would be a bit obscure for people but I was happy with how it turned out as I am not a crafty person, good at tracing but that is about it. I went to the same port-o-potties as yesterday but there was a line of two people instead of the walk up service from the day before. So far Disneyland was winning bigtime on logistics.

Went up to corral A to get a good view of the stage but more towards the right hand side so people could pass me as I knew this race would be a slow one for me. Mickey and Minnie came out to send us off on our way.





I was worried about the second half of the race because that would be when the sun was up and I knew it would get hot fast. We had pretty mild weather the first few days we were there (I wore jeans!) but it was definitely heating up through the weekend. I went out much easier than I had for the 10k and let a ton of people pass me. I did want to keep the pace up through the first few miles to try to get as much mileage in before it got hot, yes this is not how I would usually ever run a race but I try to use this technique in WDW for races which also gets you shorter character photo lines.

Again no lines for characters or at most I had to wait for one person ahead of me. It was a beautiful thing. I stopped for all the stops except Cars (again) and Prince John but with Robin Hood this time. There was lots of running backstage where they had parade sets out, most notably Mack from the Paint the Night parade. But the characters were only out in the parks which meant very few characters for a half.





Super hard to get good photos when it’s still dark out







Mack from the Paint the Night parade to help liven up the backstage areas.

Leaving the parks around mile 4 was a serious bummer, I still have 9 miles to go and the energy deflated when you step off property and hit the one and only real "hill" of the race. I was on such a Disney high the hill was a total smack in the face and my slowest mile of the race. Around mile 6 the sun really started peaking out which meant it would start to get hot. All the local groups along the course were awesome, they were out there so early in the morning to cheer us on it was amazing. I seriously loved the energy and the dynamic that the Anaheim portion of the race had. Even though I did not set a PR in running I definitely did hit a high five PR. Of course I took no pictures from this part of the race because I was tired of holding my camera and put it in my Spibelt for the rest of the race (race report fail).

What I did find weird was the run along the Santa Ana River because it was literally a big version of the “the pit” from Parks and Recreation. I had no idea it was supposed to be a river so until I Googled it later and found out that pit was a river/rain overflow area, oops.

During this middle Anahiem section of the race my “costume” Eve from Wall-E did NOT play with the non-Disney crowd. The spectators were familiar with characters like Mickey, Minnie, Aladdin, etc. But Eve was too obscure to be recognized by people along the streets. I finally got an Anaheim shout out by a teenage girl entering Angel’s stadium.

I figured I would be walking by the time we left the stadium but I literally only stopped to down my Gu and drink some water around mile 7 and we were now at mile 10. I could totally run the rest of this thing, which was huge a surprise to me. The last three miles were tough because it was getting sunny and hot and we were running near the freeway, aka not very scenic. There were a lot of fluid stations towards the end of the race and I was getting afraid I was drinking too much so I mostly just splashed water on myself and took some Powerade as I was sweating hard at this point.

I was trailing behind a woman who seemed to know the course really well. Before turns would come (or you could even see the turns) she would start making her way over to that side of the course so I stayed behind her for a bit before catching up and seeing that she was a 10 year Disneyland Half Legacy runner, and from a quick chat I also found out that she is also Legacy in Goofy and Dopey. She is my hero. She was also running a really nice race and probably took home an AG win. As I pushed ahead we wished each other a good race and once I got to the backstage entrance at California Adventure we hit the mile 12 marker and I knew we would be done soon. I started pushing the pace at little bit. I hadn’t looked at my Garmin the entire race and didn't pay attention to the time on the mile markers but when I saw my current PR time on the clock at mile 12 I realized I wasn't doing half bad and could definitely finish this thing under 2 hours.

As I started to push the pace a little bit some of the men around me got a little ruffled that they were being passed in the last mile by a woman. They would try to pick it up as I went past them but could not hang with speed I had left since I had been fairly conservative pacing wise most of the race. Unfortunately this behavior made me start to cramp up a bit. I thought I might be *that person* seizing up as soon as they cross the finish line. Luckily the cramping passed and I was able to push it a bit harder to cross the finish line. It was a lot to take in, finishing the race about a half hour faster than I thought I would and completing the C2C challenge was pretty overwhelming.

I got out quickly like yesterday but stopped for some photos and my C2C and Dumbo medals. I took a quick look at them to make sure they weren’t all banged up before making my way back to the hotel to shower and make it to the park for 9am!

1:54:25 – 786/15228 overall, 189/9486 female, 40/1800 division



Haul for the Dumbo Double Dare

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My precious…

 

[LindsayLoves]

There are two things in the WDW marathon that have never made sense to me, and now that I have done the thing that those parts which were modeled after things in California I get it, and Disneyland does it WAY better.

1. The cars around the WDW speedway portion of the race(RIP). The classic cars in the Disneyland Half are bananas, they were arranged by year and style and the people showing them are awesome. The car culture in SoCal is amazing and these people were so happy to be there giving such an amazing energy. I think that might have been well over a 1 nearly 2 miles of cars. It sounds lame but as a non-car enthusiast (hello I live in NYC and don’t own a car) I thought it was a great portion of the race.

2. Running through the stadium in WDW vs. running through Angel’s stadium. I have never understood that WWoS stadium thing, it was always pretty lackluster but man they do it right on the left coast. The crowd was so loud and energizing I can’t even put it into words.

Conclusion:

I found the 19.3 mile challenge so much easier than doing a challenge that involves a marathon. My legs were never super fatigued despite walking 15ish miles each day in the parks, to/from the races, and back and forth to the hotel. I was able to spend so much more time in the parks and really enjoy the whole trip. I would do another Disneyland race weekend in a heartbeat. I have never had a problem with the buses for the Florida races but having the freedom to walk to/from the start and finish was amazing.

 

[JillC LI]

That was a great race weekend report @LindsayLoves. I really got a feel for the whole thing. I am amazed at your times - I couldn't have done that WITHOUT stopping for pictures! lol. Love the shot of you and Lotso!

 

[Mad Stitch]

Congrats Lindsay, nice report.

What in the world is holding up Alice's skirt? I looks like Alice has her hands clasped in front of her and the skirt doesn't look to be caught on a bush or tree.

 

[LindsayLoves]

@JillC LI - thanks I was super surprised by the result. I ran 5 mile yesterday and it was a nightmare barely breaking 9 min/mile.

@Mad Stitch - OMG I did not even notice that and now I find it quite horrifying,

 

[JillC LI]

[USER=10498]@Mad Stitch - OMG I did not even notice that and now I find it quite horrifying,[/USER]

OMG that's hysterical!