the disney princess half marathon!

on sunday morning, alice, nancy, hilary, chip and i all woke up at the wonderful hour of 4:15am which b/c of day light savings - we had sprung forward an hour and so it was really 3:15am and since chicago is a time zone behind, technically alice and i were getting up at 2:15am body time. yikes, it was early! we all got ready: me by eating my customary carbs and peanut butter (usually a bagel, today toast since that is what they had on hand), pulling on the sports bra and all other running gear, pinned on my number, applied body glide and was ready to head out and start the race. we piled in to the car (sans chip - he was coming later) and drove to disney which took about 30 mins or so. then we walked to the start line via the port o potties for one last stop. however, the lines for said potties was ridiculously long and i mean ridiculously long and since there was a nice wooded area and other ladies were taking advantage of the trees we decided we would too. who needs to wait?! not these princesses!! the walk to the start was freezing and long. i just had on a shirt and shorts in anticipation of a hot day, but b/c it was still dark out it was so cold. i think we walked like a mile to the start - not kidding! - longest walk to a start line ever. in any case, we all went in the same corral so we could wait together and start together.


the fairy godmother kicked off the race with some 'punny' jokes that i found pretty dumb, yet really funny. and then, we were off! all 6000+ women and 200+ men. some people were dressed up as their favorite princess. i saw many tutus which were fun, a lot of tiaras, a few mermaids, and a lot of other weird things like the lady wearing crocs. yes crocs. for a half marathon! what?!!? i still don't understand how people wore costumes or tiaras for all 13 miles, but they did... that would have been hot and the tiara would have given me a headache i'm sure. i also spotted several groups of ladies dressed up together and some were quite creative. there was even someone dressed as ariel wearing, no joke, a total mermaid outfit complete with a tail hanging off her ass bouncing up and down with every step she took. i wish i had brought a camera and i knew that it would be a good idea, but i just didn't know how to carry it. and i don't like doing new things on race days. so i'll have to practice running with a camera for future races b/c this was definitely the one to have a camera at! not only could i have caught pics for all of you for the fun costumes, but every other mile or so there were disney princesses and princes along the way. they also played the disney themes for us and other music. the mile marker signs were not the boring old white plain markers either. oh no, disney did it right: they had elegantly illustrated with fairy tales each mile marker and each sign had a hidden mickey in it. i didn't remember this until around mile 7 where i started to look for them as i ran by. there was also disney trivia along the course which was pretty fun although i really do need to brush up on my disney princess trivia as i pretty much sucked at that game, but it served as a nice distraction.

about 6 miles in, we entered the magic kingdom (we'd been running on back roads) and we got to run through tomorrow land, frontier land, some other land, and cinderella's castle which was definitely a highlight! as we approached the castle, there were trumpeters to welcome us and some disney characters as well. just on the other side of the castle we could stop to take our picture. the line wasn't very long and even if it had been, i would have waited... i was feeling great still and keeping on pace at this point. i hadn't done more than 6 miles since the marathon so i was a bit worried about how it would all go. i knew i'd be able to do it but i was really hoping for a 2hr 30 min race or somewhere in there. around mile 7, my calves were burning. my cardio was great, my calves were screaming. along the way, they had biofreeze (a sponsor of the race) which is this stuff that cools your legs and makes them a little numb (think icy hot). so i applied that to my calves at a couple of stops and i think it helped.



i didn't end up making my goal of 2:30, but i did finish in 2:46!! and i was thrilled with that. such an improvement, though i could hardly do any worse - it took me 4hrs 15 mins to finish my first half last august - but i had to walk that whole thing b/c of my stress fracture so i don't really count that. in any case, my overall pace was 12:44 which i think is good. i run with a group on saturdays that is a 12:30 pace. i was a little slower than that, but i was covering more than twice the distance we've done on sat. this week we'll do 8 miles and i know i'll do fine.




sorry for the little pics - i stole (ahem, borrowed) them from the official photo site.