Friday Night, Shredheads Meetup
We arrived on Friday, and I went straight to the packet pickup…and ignored the stuff at the Expo. In hindsight I wish I hadn’t, but oh well. I got back to the room just in time to pack up the family and meet Laura and Kari, who were staying at the same resort we were, on the way to dinner. We took the water taxi over to Downtown Disney and relied on our expert navigating skills to get us to the restaurant.
After walking to the wrong end of Downtown Disney, um, on purpose…for sightseeing purposes, we walked back to the other end and met up with Kristen, the head Shredhead, as well as Erica (and her husband), Stephanie (and her husband), Liz, and Rekeesha. We got some sandwiches, passed out our sponsor’s pedometers and the race shirts, and had a great time!
Then E got cold and M peed in his pants, so Sharon took them back to the hotel. We all hung out for a while, then the party split up as the 5K runners (go Stephanie and Liz!) had to get to bed for their race the next morning.
Sunday Morning, Pre-Race
Fast forward to Sunday. Barely Sunday. My alarm went off at 2:45am, and the wakeup call rang at 2:53am. Disney has some REALLY annoying message playing for the wakeup call. It doesn’t make me want to wake up so much as it makes me want to smash the phone through the wall.
After a quick breakfast, shower, and getting dressed, and I was out the door to catch the 3:30am bus to the staging area at Epcot. It was COLD…39 degrees! I’ve run in much colder than that, but this involved us standing around doing nothing from about 4am to 6am. Fortunately Laura, Kari, and I found Kristen pretty easily and we huddled together for warmth.
Huddling with Laura and Kari to conserve body heat. BRR!
After a while we meandered over to the portapotty line and waited for what seemed like an eternity. I met Kari going in while I was on my way out, and the only thing I could think of to say was, “it wasn’t me!”
I lied. Sorry, Kari.
We finally got on our way toward the start line, and with our arms linked for warmth I felt like we were in the Wizard of Oz skipping down the yellow brick road. I was so amped up by the cold, the race nerves, and the Diet Mountain Dew that I was shaking…so much so that Kristen commented on it.
We got to the start line, which had plenty of short-line portapotties (DANG!), and while Kari and Laura went to their corral, Kristen and I elbowed our way to the front of ours. Miraculously, out of more than 10,000 people there, we walked right by Erica…hooray! Then we waited. And waited.
And waited some more.
Start – Mile 3.1 (5K)
Finally, 6am arrived and the first corral was released with a blaze of fireworks. We were herded toward the front, and as we started running 7 minutes later, we got our own set of fireworks. I have to admit, it was a kick ass way to start a race. There was a huge (for that time of day, at least) crowd of people cheering us on, and my race nerves dropped away as we got going.
The start of the race - everything I do should start with fireworks!
The first three miles felt unbelievably easy and fast (although they weren’t particularly fast). I started out pretty slow, then realized I needed to speed up to find my rhythm. The first three miles had at least one band, somebody from a Bugs Life, and a big display from the Pirates of the Caribbean – including a big boat and some pirates doing their thing. It was all very cool, and it definitely helped having those (and the water areas) to look forward to as landmarks.
Mile 1: 9:40
Mile 2: 9:57
Mile 3: 9:14
Official 5K split: 30:10
Miles 4-7
The first 3 miles may have been the easiest, but the next 4 were definitely the most fun part of the run. Somewhere in these I heard (and then saw) Stephanie, her husband, and Erica’s husband (hereafter known as “The Crew”) cheering me on. How awesome was that! Plus, they got a picture of my butt. I was so fast they couldn’t focus on me until I was already past.
According to Stephanie, "the yellow stripe is wbgookin's ass."
As we approached the Magic Kingdom I don’t remember a whole lot other than running through where you’d pay to park your car, and the people yelling at us to watch out for the speed bump. I guess somebody learned that one the hard way. It was pretty cool running around stuff you’d normally not be able to. Suddenly we were making a super-sharp left turn to get headed toward the front of the park. Seeing Space Mountain during the middle of a race was definitely motivating. And then I was turning onto Main Street.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t get chills and a big dopey grin on my face. They had some pretty cool music playing (think low bass and electronic effects), and there were TONS of people cheering. Plus it was the Magic Kingdom! WOO! We ran down Main Street toward the castle, turned into and ran through Tomorrowland, ran through a little of Fantasyland…and suddenly we were turning to run through the back of Cinderella’s Castle. They had it closed to pedestrian traffic for most of our visit (for the shows in front?), but it was open for us, and running through was, well, a little uneventful. After all, when you’re inside the castle it’s hard to see any of it. The turn onto Main Street was much more exciting for me.
Anyway, according to my watch we ran through Frontierland (I don’t remember any of that) and out of the park through some maintenancy-type buildings (I do remember those). That was the first water stop where I noticed people weren’t throwing their cups in the garbage but on the ground instead. Lame, runners, lame!
And just like that, after about 1.25 miles, we were done with the Magic Kingdom.
Mile 4: 9:19
Mile 5: 9:28
Mile 6: 9:28
Official 10K split: 59:42
Mile 7: 9:37
Miles 8-10
I don’t remember a lot about 7-10, which seems to be pretty common among the posts I’ve read about the race. It was post-Magic Kingdom, so it was a little bit of a letdown, and I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a lot of roadside entertainment either. I vaguely remember some bands, and a few characters along the side, but they might have been earlier or later. The only thing I remember for sure was around mile 8 seeing The Crew cheering me on again. That was totally unexpected (again), and super motivating (again). I must have slowed down, though, because they were able to get a picture of me.
Fortunately, I remembered to do the classic "White Guy Thumbs Up" pose! My thumbs look really weird!
Mile 8: 9:13
Mile 9: 9:19
Mile 10: 9:30
Official 15K split: 1:29:21
Miles 11-13.1
I clearly recall passing mile 10 and realizing that I still had a whole 5K to run. Ugh. Plus, we’d all read that there was a “hill” on the course (an overpass) at about 10.5 miles. Expecting the worst, lo and behold at about 10.4 miles there was an overpass. I was prepared to drop to my first real walk of the race, but other than the superelevation of the road it wasn’t bad at all. Partway around the curve (it was a cloverleaf interchange) there was an army man (G.I. Joe?) cheering us on and that was the beginning of the entertainment I remember again.
Then came TWO MORE OVERPASSES that weren’t in the travel brochure!
Fortunately, the adrenaline of almost being done got me through them, and as I got closer to Epcot and saw the parking lots and Spaceship Earth, I was really looking forward to finishing.
Duh.
We got into Epcot, ran toward Spaceship Earth, and I looked at my watched and realized we weren’t near 13.1 yet. We had to run by Spaceship Earth, go all the way to the lake, then turn around, run back under it, and head back to the parking lot where the finish line was. Ugh, what a horrible deception.
How dare Disney hide how far away the finish line was behind a bunch of switchbacks and hidden areas, and make me think I was almost there when I wasn’t and, uh, oh wait, that’s what they do all over Disney. Why didn’t I expect that again?
Almost done!
Coming to the finish was almost anticlimactic since it was back out of the park. I “sprinted” to the end and made it in 2 hours, 4 minutes and 46 seconds. Not bad. Not the sub-2 hours I was secretly hoping for, but still a great time for me.
13.1 miles, 2:04:46
Mile 11: 9:14
Mile 12: 9:29
Mile 13: 9:06
Official 13.1 time: 2:04:46
Post-race
I waited just on the other side of the finish line and read a tweet from The Crew saying they saw me finish. I wish I’d seen them at the finish line to give them a big grin, but I didn’t expect to see them a third time! I eventually met up with Kristen and Erica, and we were some happy Shredheads!
We kick ass!
After a while Kristen and I took off toward where the buses dropped us off, only to find that they weren’t there to pick us up. What seemed like miles later, Kristen had to get to the airport so she used her Epcot ticket to get into the park and sprinted through the course again, exiting at her hotel on the other side. I wandered back to the finish line, met up with Kari and Laura, and got on the bus. The bus that had been waiting about 50 feet in the OTHER DIRECTION THAT I HEADED WITH KRISTEN. Had I turned my head, I’d have seen the signs and made it back to the hotel like an hour earlier. Doy!
But I made it back, and now have an awesome medal to prove I finished my first half marathon! Check out the data from my watch, which includes a map and everything, here.
Yes, that's a little crown sticker on my hat.
(And yes, I’d love to make this a yearly event!)
