Man. I love sleeping. When that 2am alarm went off it was super hard to get up but then I remembered it was race day and quickly got a move on!! Our Minnie Mouse costumes were super comfortable and after a quick glittering we hit the road to Epcot.
We had to wait in line for the bathrooms for close to 45 minutes and by that point we had to hustle over to the corrals to line up!! The race started t 5:30 but our corral didn’t go across the start line until well past 6:30. That’s a lot of standing around and waiting! When the fire works finally went off for us, we boogied over the start line and settled in for our loooooooooong journey. Originally our plan was to run this entire race (with stops to see the characters) and finish in a reasonable amount of time. Then, both my partners ended up getting injured so the plan changed to walking and trying our best to finish. I’ll be damned if I paid that much money and didn’t get a finisher medal so I was glad when we heard rumors that they were sweeping the course for people who couldn’t keep pace! It was a terrifying thought to have come that far and get put on a bus so I was able to convince the girls to try running in order to cover more ground. Running 13.1 miles is tough…but walking 13.1 miles is excruciating. My feet were killing me by mile 5 and by mile 7 I had to stop at the medic tent to have them tape my ankles.
I had trained hard for this race but it was still incredibly taxing on my body. We were physically exhausted by mile 8 when we got word that the “balloon ladies” were only two minutes behind us! The ladies with the balloons were keeping a 16min/mile pace and anyone who fell behind them got put on a bus and escorted off the course. The threat was real and it felt wonderful to be able to run and try to put some distance in between us and them. Again, no chance I was getting swept up!! We had come so far to not finish! We heard a bike medic start warning us to hustle and I have never seen Shari run that fast!! Another police officer was yelling that if we could just get across the bridge we would be safe. We were fast approaching an overpass on the highway and we could see it lined with police officers and three huge busses…get over the bridge was our chant and we scooted through just in time!! By the time we got to the top of the overpass and looked back, the police cars had pulled across the road and all the remaining runners were being bussed off the course. I started crying knowing that that had been the final sweep and we were safe for the last four miles. I honestly was heartbroken for those people who made it to mile 9 and didn’t get to finish. There were so many photo opportunities and it’s supposed to be a fun race, but the parks needed to open and we couldn’t be out there all day. Thankfully we were able to keep trucking along and before long the finish line was in sight!
Are we there yet???
I am so incredibly proud of us! Even though we knew we would have to walk most of the race and our time is nothing for the record books, we did a half marathon and we finished!!!! Not everyone can say that. I cried again across the finish line and headed straight for the ice! It was so hard to get moving again after our snack and a million pictures, but we picked up pizza and went back to the hotel to get cleaned up. It was hard to believe that the race was already over and somehow we we were done for the day! Four hours of walking managed to fly by and we survived. After getting showered and changed, we wasted no time getting back into the car and heading to Magic Kingdom. We didn’t want to waste a minute of our trip and had to make the most of our time away! We made a pit stop at the pharmacy to stock up on band aids and Advil (somehow we all managed to get blisters on our ring toe) so that we could spend a few hours on the rides in Disney World!
