Day 4 was largely devoted to the Half Marathon, though we were done by 9 and met up with my parents, sister and the kiddos shortly after that. Then we headed off to California Adventure to have lunch at Ariel’s Grotto where we had pretty good food and got to meet tons of princesses. Fun fun.
Despite my (our) bodies’ protests, we pressed on and checked out a good bit of California Adventure before coming back home and relaxing. I went to sleep at 7:30 after a couple of Advils and some wine.
The race is detailed below. It was one of my favorites I’ve ever run … check it out: Day 4 dawned early. REALLY EARLY, 3:30 AM. We were up and out of the house by 4 AM. Dear Dad and Sister Kelly (Gaga) were kind enough to drop us off at Disneyland where we found out where we were supposed to be and did the hurry-up-and-wait gig. First we hung around in a parking lot with a Ryan Seacrest style DJ and party style thing going on. That was pretty cool. We did the port-a-potty thing and the warmup thing and then the photo thing and then they herded us towards the corrals.
Corrals at Disney are kind of a pharse. There were only 6 for 14K participants … WTF? No idea. We also couldn’t figure out ahead of time how to get into any higher corral than the last so we just went with it. We probably should have been about middle of the pack, but c’est la vie.
So we did s’more hurry up and wait in the corrals. And finally around 6:35 we got ‘er going. Matt took off ahead of me as he is faster. And I started listening to Mockingjay, which I’d strategically saved for the race. I was constantly turning it on and off though because there were tons of spectators and lots of music along the course and tons of things to look at. Mucho fun!!
The first bit of the course was through Disneyland and California Adventure and that was my favorite part. It was super easy to keep a good pace through there and I didn’t even bother with the first couple of water stops. By mile 6 I was still feeling good and I just kept going. I really didn’t end up taking any walking breaks until after mile 10!!
We ran through Angels’ Stadium and I got to high-five about 100 Girl and Boy scouts and by then it was almost time to bring it back into the park. The last mile or so was pretty killer, but I kept going and my very last split was actually my best (though it only consisted of .1 miles, haha).
I hit my pace time almost spot on, just a minute over, with 2:31 … still no idea how I did that since my watch had me 8 minutes ahead of pace. Something to keep in mind for the next race.
Post race was the usual, sad mix of stale bagels with nothing on them and a few bananas and of course powerade. Blah.
Overall, the race was wonderful and such a fun one to run. It was pricey and comparing line item of race pros and cons, I’m not sure it would ever hold up on paper, but the experience was GREAT and I am so so glad we did it.
That sounds like a really cool venue for a race!