Hi everyone!!!
After about two years of reading these forums, and countless trips to Disney, this is my very first trip report!!
My husband and I got married September 2009, and decided last year that we wanted to run our very FIRST half marathon. Actually, this is our very first race ever. ☺
Every January my family goes to Disney and it just so happens to be over Marathon weekend. For years I thought how I would never be able to run more than a mile at a time. But in January 2010, my husband was inspired. Thinking back on it, it really is ridiculous, considering January 2010 had TERRIBLE weather for race day-freezing cold rainy mess. None the less, Erik had a new goal. I was not yet convinced.
One day in April, I found Hollybelle’s trip report of her first marathon and was absolutely inspired and certain I could at least run a half marathon. We were SO excited of the thought of rare characters and couldn’t wait to accomplish this goal together. I attribute a huge part of our accomplishment for Hollybelle for her wonderful writing and play by play of her first marathon.
Well, Training started in April. My husband took it on with full force. He found the Nike+ program and LOVED it. First he did the Walk to Run Program, and then the 10k, then Half Marathon. I did the walk to run with him in April…and well sort of fell off the bandwagon. I have never been a “runner” and got discouraged. I got to 3 miles and didn’t feel like I could go further. So my training stopped. I am in shape, I was taking dance classes a few times a week, but made excuses to not go running. Erik kept on going and had wonderful 8 mile and 10 mile runs. I was so proud of him and had pretty much accepted he would be doing the race alone.
Two weeks before the race I got really sad. The thought of him finishing this goal that we had made together alone broke my heart. So I tried to go for a six mile run. I got to 3.5 miles and cried. I just wasn’t ready. So Erik was going to be doing this alone.
Disney:
We got to Disney on Monday January 3rd, we landed in Orlando around 10 am on Monday. There are twelve of us that go every year. My mom, dad, older sister Amanda (30), her husband Grant (30), her daughter Kayla (6), her son Alex(4), my brother Chad (21), his gf Sydney (21), my youngest brother Zack (15), his friend Sam(15) and me (23) and my husband Erik (24). We were staying at Saratoga Springs resort. My parents are DVC members and we can get 2 bedroom villas there for not as many points as other resorts.
The week leading up to the race was great. Beautiful weather- sunny, mid to high 60’s, with a light breeze. We walked probably five miles a day visiting all the parks. In hopes that I may change my mind, my husband had bought me really nice running socks. I wore them walking around the parks all week and had zero blisters and felt really good.
On Thursday morning, Erik mentioned he needed to go to the expo to pick up his bib..etc. It made my stomach drop. I didn’t want to hear about the race. I felt that I had totally let him down by not running…and wanted to avoid talking about it at all times. BTW- Erik had never made me feel guilty…he had been a wonderful encourager this whole time.
Thursday at 3:30pm, Erik and I left Animal Kingdom park and headed back to the resort to drive to the Expo. We rented a van during the trip and thought that would be the best way to get there quickly and make our 6:30 dinner reservations. We got to the expo at 4:30.
For those who have never been, it is something else. It was so amazing to see all of the wonderful volunteers helping with registration, all of the vendors, it was so exciting. Which made me feel worse. If only I had trained more! So we picked up my bib (just in case-ha!) and headed to our ADRs with the family. We went to Coral Reef that night! YUM! ☺
That night Erik and I had a long chat. We knew from others trip reports, that you need to get on a bus as close to 3am as possible on race day. Then since Erik was in Corral G, he wouldn’t be running until 6:11am. He would be waiting to race alone for 3 hours. Also, I knew transportation to the family celebration area was pretty tricky with the road closures and delays. I wanted to support my husband and be there for him. So after a loooooonnnggggg discussion, I decided I would run the first mile of the race with Erik. I had already paid for it, had my clothes, shoes, good socks with me. I would start it…get picked up by the bus and wait for him to finish.
Friday Night before the race, we stopped at the Artist’s Palate in Saratoga Springs, grabbed some fruit/granola bars/powerade for the morning, and went to bed.
Race Day:
2:30 am came wayyyyyyy to quickly! The first thing Erik said when he woke up was… “we’ve made a huge mistake.” Haha any arrested development fans out there? Anyway, we got dressed and were at the bus stop at 2:58 am. We were on the bus and ready to go. I felt COMPLETELY out of place. The othr ppl on the bus, were talking about the runners retreat tent, and hoping to finish under two hours. These were some amazing athletes. We get to Epcot at 3:30 am. When we walked in the first holding area, there was a DJ playing and we were surrounded by porter potties. I have never in my life seen so many porter potties!!!! They were everywhere!
Erik and I ate our breakfast, and at 4:30 am they moved us into another holding area with …you guessed it…more porter potties! Since we had gotten there so early, we were at the very front of the crowd. Thank God! We found out much later how important this was for us. So at 5am, we were walking to our corrals. We were corral G which is the second to last corral. We walked about half a mile? To our Corral. We were probably the firs 10-15 in Corral G, another wonderful thing ☺ We knew that there were about in each corral there were roughly 6,000 ppl. So, if we were in the first few of our corral we had about 12,000 ppl between us and bum bum buuuummm…The Sweepers! For me, this didn’t matter, but Erik really wanted to finish and had been very worried about finishing under the mile pace requirements.
I met some wonderful women while waiting. My favorite was a woman named Barb. She was WONDERFUL. At first when I saw her, she was wearing a tweed full length trench coat over her running gear. I thought she was a little odd. I mean Erik and I had sweat shirt and sweat pants as our throw aways…and she was going to run in a trench coat? She started talking to another lady in front of her who was also running the Goofy Challenge. Her face just lit up! She had been running the Disney marathon since 1992! She said she always gets a nice winter coat and ditches it very early in the race. Since the clothes get picked up and are given to homeless shelters, she likes to donate a nice coat. How sweet is that? And I had thought she was silly for wearing such a nice coat. Thank you God for that little life lesson on judges others by appearance! So, I stared talking to Barb about races and any advice she had for us.
She just said keep moving…even when you want to stop just keep moving….and always get something to drink at the water stations. We talked for awhile and then it was time to get started!
The fireworks were going off and music was playing it was so exciting! I almost forgot that I would only be running one mile! Corral D, E, F had all gome! It was our turn!
And we’re off!!!! We started running. Man oh man! It was exciting!!!!! Erik and I were running at about a nine minute mile pace. Erik was worried we were going to fast, but there was so much adrenaline!!! We got to mile one….and I was feeling good! So I told Erik I wanted to run with him one more mile.
Miles 1-3 were not too fun. It was very dark, and in my mind I had imagined characters on every corner! But that was not the case in the half marathon. We got to the giant Epcot hot air balloon and I realized we were almost to mile 3 and we weren’t even into Epcot yet.
From the map I had thought we actually went through Epcot in the beginning not around it. And I had heard that the stretch from Epcot to Magic Kingdom was the most boring …. I was really confused! I looked up and saw the Magic Kingdom Archway! We had made it to the Magic Kingdom…well sort of… We made it to the gates. In my mind, If I could come this far I wanted to try and get to the castle-Mile 6.
Mile 4 we got to the transportation ticket center…and we had to go potty! Every porter potty line had 5 ppl waiting in it, and we didn’t have that much time to stop but we knew there were b-rooms at the TTC, the men’s room- no wait, womens- 15 ppl deep out of the door. So I would have to wait, but I told Erik to go. I was running in place because I KNEW if I stopped moving my feet it was over (thanks Barb ☺) Erik came out 20 seconds later and we were on to the Magic Kingdom. Mile 5 came and went…. How was I doing this? Mile 5.5 Erik got a blister… Bless his heart I know it must have hurt so bad. (We found out later it was about two inches long on his instep) But I told him we had made it this far with no sweepers in sight lets keep running! We were running at 12 minute mile pace…running 9 minutes and walking 3 of every mile.
Mile 5.5 I knew we were getting close to the castle….We came in a side entrance onto main street, went around the corner…and there it was. ☺
I lost it this was the farthest I had ever run in my entire life and I was in my favorite place in the world. Happy tears were streaming down my face. I had read from Hollybelle’s report (thanks girl!) to try and go to the bathroom in the parks. I veered off the course on main street towards the Noodle restaurant that is always closed and heading into the bathroom. No line!!!!!! ☺
I ran out and Erik said we HAD to take a picture in front of the castle ☺
We came around to the back of the castle and saw the evil stepsisters and Lady Tremaine! We stopped for a quick pic, and ran through the castle.
This was my favotire part of the run. All of the runners were cheering and yelling as they ran through the castle. It made this amazing echoing sound that resonated through the tunnel!!! It was so amazing.
We ran down in front of the castle, this is the moment Erik had been waiting for. He was so excited and had dreamed about this moment to come this far. We hit mile 6 in frontier land and then heading out of the park.
During this whole time I had been texting my dad on every mile marker. Like the rest of my family, no one thought I was really running the race. He was shocked and excited with each mile I texted him. I also butt dialed my boss twice at 6:45am and 7:40 am.. oops. Haha!
At mile 8 we were wearing down. Erik’s blister was really hurting him, and my hips were getting sore. Remarkably, and by the grace of God we were still feeling pretty good. No blisters for me, no cramps for either of us, we were doing good. We just couldn’t run anymore. We started power walking. Around mile 9 I realized… We were going to finish. Just a few hours prior I thought I would have been sitting on a bench waiting for my husband, but here we were together running past mile 9!
Mile 10 was the dreaded Epcot on ramp hill. It was TOUGH! Just walking on that slant was not fun. And then we heard her….
“Come on!!! You can do it!!! You are NOT faling your mission!!!! Run for those who can’t!!!”
We heard shouts coming from two ppl or so behind us. I turned around and there was a woman talking on her cell phone while running up the hill behind us. She was running for “The Team” –those running for Lymphoma and Leukemia I believe? She was wearing purple and encouraging another runner who was a mile behind us on her cell phone! She was such a wonderful encourager. Erik and I took her advice to heart! When she got off the phone I jokingly said, “ I wish you were our coach!! You are a wonderful encourager!” She took that sentence, and made it her personal goal to encourage us the rest of the race. She was SUCH a God send and a blessing!!!! I was shutting down, and getting worried about sweepers ( I had not come this far to get swept!) but Erik and Liz kept encouraging me to keep moving.
We hit mile 12 and I knew we were safe. We just needed to pick up our medals
We ran around the Christmas tree at Epcot, and “when you wish upon a star” was playing. I cried. Hahaha! I just couldn’t believe we had come so far! We came around the corner and saw the finish line. The was a choir singing “We are the Champions”. And my husband looked at me and said, “Your life is a MOVIE!!!” hahaha!
We crossed the finish line holding hands. ☺
I never tought I would actually be able to do this, but with my wonderful husband, Hollybelle for the original inspiraton, Barb, Liz, and by the grace of God for helping me finish….I accomplished a dream with my best friend.
Hope you all enjoyed this!!! Sorry I am so long winded!!! Thanks!!!
After about two years of reading these forums, and countless trips to Disney, this is my very first trip report!!
My husband and I got married September 2009, and decided last year that we wanted to run our very FIRST half marathon. Actually, this is our very first race ever. ☺
Every January my family goes to Disney and it just so happens to be over Marathon weekend. For years I thought how I would never be able to run more than a mile at a time. But in January 2010, my husband was inspired. Thinking back on it, it really is ridiculous, considering January 2010 had TERRIBLE weather for race day-freezing cold rainy mess. None the less, Erik had a new goal. I was not yet convinced.
One day in April, I found Hollybelle’s trip report of her first marathon and was absolutely inspired and certain I could at least run a half marathon. We were SO excited of the thought of rare characters and couldn’t wait to accomplish this goal together. I attribute a huge part of our accomplishment for Hollybelle for her wonderful writing and play by play of her first marathon.
Well, Training started in April. My husband took it on with full force. He found the Nike+ program and LOVED it. First he did the Walk to Run Program, and then the 10k, then Half Marathon. I did the walk to run with him in April…and well sort of fell off the bandwagon. I have never been a “runner” and got discouraged. I got to 3 miles and didn’t feel like I could go further. So my training stopped. I am in shape, I was taking dance classes a few times a week, but made excuses to not go running. Erik kept on going and had wonderful 8 mile and 10 mile runs. I was so proud of him and had pretty much accepted he would be doing the race alone.
Two weeks before the race I got really sad. The thought of him finishing this goal that we had made together alone broke my heart. So I tried to go for a six mile run. I got to 3.5 miles and cried. I just wasn’t ready. So Erik was going to be doing this alone.
Disney:
We got to Disney on Monday January 3rd, we landed in Orlando around 10 am on Monday. There are twelve of us that go every year. My mom, dad, older sister Amanda (30), her husband Grant (30), her daughter Kayla (6), her son Alex(4), my brother Chad (21), his gf Sydney (21), my youngest brother Zack (15), his friend Sam(15) and me (23) and my husband Erik (24). We were staying at Saratoga Springs resort. My parents are DVC members and we can get 2 bedroom villas there for not as many points as other resorts.
The week leading up to the race was great. Beautiful weather- sunny, mid to high 60’s, with a light breeze. We walked probably five miles a day visiting all the parks. In hopes that I may change my mind, my husband had bought me really nice running socks. I wore them walking around the parks all week and had zero blisters and felt really good.
On Thursday morning, Erik mentioned he needed to go to the expo to pick up his bib..etc. It made my stomach drop. I didn’t want to hear about the race. I felt that I had totally let him down by not running…and wanted to avoid talking about it at all times. BTW- Erik had never made me feel guilty…he had been a wonderful encourager this whole time.
Thursday at 3:30pm, Erik and I left Animal Kingdom park and headed back to the resort to drive to the Expo. We rented a van during the trip and thought that would be the best way to get there quickly and make our 6:30 dinner reservations. We got to the expo at 4:30.
For those who have never been, it is something else. It was so amazing to see all of the wonderful volunteers helping with registration, all of the vendors, it was so exciting. Which made me feel worse. If only I had trained more! So we picked up my bib (just in case-ha!) and headed to our ADRs with the family. We went to Coral Reef that night! YUM! ☺
That night Erik and I had a long chat. We knew from others trip reports, that you need to get on a bus as close to 3am as possible on race day. Then since Erik was in Corral G, he wouldn’t be running until 6:11am. He would be waiting to race alone for 3 hours. Also, I knew transportation to the family celebration area was pretty tricky with the road closures and delays. I wanted to support my husband and be there for him. So after a loooooonnnggggg discussion, I decided I would run the first mile of the race with Erik. I had already paid for it, had my clothes, shoes, good socks with me. I would start it…get picked up by the bus and wait for him to finish.
Friday Night before the race, we stopped at the Artist’s Palate in Saratoga Springs, grabbed some fruit/granola bars/powerade for the morning, and went to bed.
Race Day:
2:30 am came wayyyyyyy to quickly! The first thing Erik said when he woke up was… “we’ve made a huge mistake.” Haha any arrested development fans out there? Anyway, we got dressed and were at the bus stop at 2:58 am. We were on the bus and ready to go. I felt COMPLETELY out of place. The othr ppl on the bus, were talking about the runners retreat tent, and hoping to finish under two hours. These were some amazing athletes. We get to Epcot at 3:30 am. When we walked in the first holding area, there was a DJ playing and we were surrounded by porter potties. I have never in my life seen so many porter potties!!!! They were everywhere!
Erik and I ate our breakfast, and at 4:30 am they moved us into another holding area with …you guessed it…more porter potties! Since we had gotten there so early, we were at the very front of the crowd. Thank God! We found out much later how important this was for us. So at 5am, we were walking to our corrals. We were corral G which is the second to last corral. We walked about half a mile? To our Corral. We were probably the firs 10-15 in Corral G, another wonderful thing ☺ We knew that there were about in each corral there were roughly 6,000 ppl. So, if we were in the first few of our corral we had about 12,000 ppl between us and bum bum buuuummm…The Sweepers! For me, this didn’t matter, but Erik really wanted to finish and had been very worried about finishing under the mile pace requirements.
I met some wonderful women while waiting. My favorite was a woman named Barb. She was WONDERFUL. At first when I saw her, she was wearing a tweed full length trench coat over her running gear. I thought she was a little odd. I mean Erik and I had sweat shirt and sweat pants as our throw aways…and she was going to run in a trench coat? She started talking to another lady in front of her who was also running the Goofy Challenge. Her face just lit up! She had been running the Disney marathon since 1992! She said she always gets a nice winter coat and ditches it very early in the race. Since the clothes get picked up and are given to homeless shelters, she likes to donate a nice coat. How sweet is that? And I had thought she was silly for wearing such a nice coat. Thank you God for that little life lesson on judges others by appearance! So, I stared talking to Barb about races and any advice she had for us.
She just said keep moving…even when you want to stop just keep moving….and always get something to drink at the water stations. We talked for awhile and then it was time to get started!
The fireworks were going off and music was playing it was so exciting! I almost forgot that I would only be running one mile! Corral D, E, F had all gome! It was our turn!
And we’re off!!!! We started running. Man oh man! It was exciting!!!!! Erik and I were running at about a nine minute mile pace. Erik was worried we were going to fast, but there was so much adrenaline!!! We got to mile one….and I was feeling good! So I told Erik I wanted to run with him one more mile.
Miles 1-3 were not too fun. It was very dark, and in my mind I had imagined characters on every corner! But that was not the case in the half marathon. We got to the giant Epcot hot air balloon and I realized we were almost to mile 3 and we weren’t even into Epcot yet.
From the map I had thought we actually went through Epcot in the beginning not around it. And I had heard that the stretch from Epcot to Magic Kingdom was the most boring …. I was really confused! I looked up and saw the Magic Kingdom Archway! We had made it to the Magic Kingdom…well sort of… We made it to the gates. In my mind, If I could come this far I wanted to try and get to the castle-Mile 6.
Mile 4 we got to the transportation ticket center…and we had to go potty! Every porter potty line had 5 ppl waiting in it, and we didn’t have that much time to stop but we knew there were b-rooms at the TTC, the men’s room- no wait, womens- 15 ppl deep out of the door. So I would have to wait, but I told Erik to go. I was running in place because I KNEW if I stopped moving my feet it was over (thanks Barb ☺) Erik came out 20 seconds later and we were on to the Magic Kingdom. Mile 5 came and went…. How was I doing this? Mile 5.5 Erik got a blister… Bless his heart I know it must have hurt so bad. (We found out later it was about two inches long on his instep) But I told him we had made it this far with no sweepers in sight lets keep running! We were running at 12 minute mile pace…running 9 minutes and walking 3 of every mile.
Mile 5.5 I knew we were getting close to the castle….We came in a side entrance onto main street, went around the corner…and there it was. ☺
I lost it this was the farthest I had ever run in my entire life and I was in my favorite place in the world. Happy tears were streaming down my face. I had read from Hollybelle’s report (thanks girl!) to try and go to the bathroom in the parks. I veered off the course on main street towards the Noodle restaurant that is always closed and heading into the bathroom. No line!!!!!! ☺
I ran out and Erik said we HAD to take a picture in front of the castle ☺
We came around to the back of the castle and saw the evil stepsisters and Lady Tremaine! We stopped for a quick pic, and ran through the castle.
This was my favotire part of the run. All of the runners were cheering and yelling as they ran through the castle. It made this amazing echoing sound that resonated through the tunnel!!! It was so amazing.
We ran down in front of the castle, this is the moment Erik had been waiting for. He was so excited and had dreamed about this moment to come this far. We hit mile 6 in frontier land and then heading out of the park.
During this whole time I had been texting my dad on every mile marker. Like the rest of my family, no one thought I was really running the race. He was shocked and excited with each mile I texted him. I also butt dialed my boss twice at 6:45am and 7:40 am.. oops. Haha!
At mile 8 we were wearing down. Erik’s blister was really hurting him, and my hips were getting sore. Remarkably, and by the grace of God we were still feeling pretty good. No blisters for me, no cramps for either of us, we were doing good. We just couldn’t run anymore. We started power walking. Around mile 9 I realized… We were going to finish. Just a few hours prior I thought I would have been sitting on a bench waiting for my husband, but here we were together running past mile 9!
Mile 10 was the dreaded Epcot on ramp hill. It was TOUGH! Just walking on that slant was not fun. And then we heard her….
“Come on!!! You can do it!!! You are NOT faling your mission!!!! Run for those who can’t!!!”
We heard shouts coming from two ppl or so behind us. I turned around and there was a woman talking on her cell phone while running up the hill behind us. She was running for “The Team” –those running for Lymphoma and Leukemia I believe? She was wearing purple and encouraging another runner who was a mile behind us on her cell phone! She was such a wonderful encourager. Erik and I took her advice to heart! When she got off the phone I jokingly said, “ I wish you were our coach!! You are a wonderful encourager!” She took that sentence, and made it her personal goal to encourage us the rest of the race. She was SUCH a God send and a blessing!!!! I was shutting down, and getting worried about sweepers ( I had not come this far to get swept!) but Erik and Liz kept encouraging me to keep moving.
We hit mile 12 and I knew we were safe. We just needed to pick up our medals
We ran around the Christmas tree at Epcot, and “when you wish upon a star” was playing. I cried. Hahaha! I just couldn’t believe we had come so far! We came around the corner and saw the finish line. The was a choir singing “We are the Champions”. And my husband looked at me and said, “Your life is a MOVIE!!!” hahaha!We crossed the finish line holding hands. ☺
I never tought I would actually be able to do this, but with my wonderful husband, Hollybelle for the original inspiraton, Barb, Liz, and by the grace of God for helping me finish….I accomplished a dream with my best friend.
Hope you all enjoyed this!!! Sorry I am so long winded!!! Thanks!!!
