Race Recap

As I posted on Friday, last weekend I ran Disney's Half Marathon. The entire week before I was worked up into a tightly-wound tizzy, not over the race, but over the weather.

What kind of weather you ask? Well, the start of the race was 27 degrees and what the weatherman called a "Wintry Mix" which I now know consists of a lovely trinity of rain, sleet AND snow. It was awesome.

I had assembled an enviable race outfit--a long sleeved Nike dry fit shirt, running tights, pants to go over top of them, a running jacket, a big Target fleece jacket that I planned to ditch along the race, two pairs of gloves (laugh if you will) a scarf, and a headband to cover my ears. I sounds ridiculous, but it kept me from freezing to death.

I woke up at 3am, necessary if I was to make it to the last shuttle from the hotel which was at 4am. I got to Epcot where the race started, checked my bag, and found a nice spot near a tent to block the wind while I tried to stay warm. That's right about when it started to sleet. As a horrified Floridian, I watched the little balls of ice land on my glove and roll around. Now I understand why the northerners look at palm trees like they're something special, cause ice from the heavens might as well have been a three-headed dog the way I was staring at it.

I made a friend by that tent, Vanessa, who happened to stop there to eat her bagel with the same hopes I had of keeping warm. It was all for not, but it did keep the wind at bay. But we started chatting, waited in the pre-race port-a-potty line together, went to the start together, and before I knew it we were at the finish line together.

Here we are at Mile 4.2 where we stumbled upon Rey.

Let's back up. I started in the last corral. Even worse, I started in the BACK of the last corral. This meant, I spent miles upon miles upon miles dodging walkers. You have NO IDEA how many people did this race intending to walk the whole thing. Walkers from the start! DROVES of them! And the ruder of the bunch would walk seven or eight across so it was impossible to pass. I had really taken for granted that in my typical running I am able to go in a straight line, one foot in front of the other. This was not the case here. I wish there was a way to calculate how much energy I expended and how much extra length I added to the race with all of this bobbing and weaving. Next time I think I'll turn on my GPS to see... I think Disney should reserve the whole last wave for walkers, cause they were a total pain in my ass.

I started running on the grass because then I didn't have to dodge the walkers, but there was a whole new obstacle there--thousands of articles of discarded clothing. Jackets, shirts, hats, gloves, ponchos and even trash bags.... it was however the lesser of the two evils and as long as the ground was flat enough I was pretty much on the grass. But all the bobbing and weaving and jumping over people's crap, my hips were screaming.

I decided to chronicle my journey with some high quality iPhone pictures. It was fun to run through the gates of the Magic Kingdom, and I couldn't help but think about how many times I'd been in that same spot, except in a vehicle.

Rey, bless his heart, was running from point to point on the race with my camera like he was the paparazzi. I admit it was really fun to see him in random spots on the race, kinda like a Rey version of Where's Waldo. And I handed him a bunch of layers of clothes at one point too so I got to keep the cheapo jacket I bought intended to discard on the race. I became rather fond of it.

Unfortunately, Rey is completely clueless on how to function my camera. He took tons and tons of picture--all on "Close Up" mode. So the majority are blurry messes. I will have to give Rey some rudimentary lessons before we try this again.

Somehow he got a good picture of this guy, running along in a surgical mask and rubber gloves, like he's about to perform surgery in the middle of the race a la M*A*S*H (which I now know stands for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, thanks to last night's Quiz Night).

It was so cold that my Gu packets were in a semi-frozen state. That was really freaky. I'm used to being able to shoot them, swig some water and go, but I daresay I had to chew the buggers. And my Carmex was definitely frozen. And everyone knows how I can't live without my Carmex. The fact that I'm in Flordia, running, and small packets of things are freezing... well it's just not natural.

After 6 miles, we got to the Magic Kingdom, which was really a lovely sight. I had to pee since almost the beginning of the race. It was either stop at one of the water stations and wait in a ten person deep port-a-potty line, or stop somewhere in Magic Kingdom. Which would you choose? Tomorrowland it was. But I still had to wait in a line, and it was painful, painful to watch the walkers going by that I would have to start dodging again.



Then I saw Buzz Lightyear. And I thought I should take a picture of him, the boys would get a kick about it when I recapped my race to them.

Except then Buzz sorta charged at me. In a freaky, scary, serial killer kinda way.

So I took a picture of that, too.

And just like that, you were out of the Magic Kingdom. The race was roads, roads, more roads, five seconds in Magic Kingdom, then some more roads, roads, more roads, then five seconds in Epcot, then it was over.

To say I was cold afterwards would be a complete and utter understatement. It was below 30 degrees, I was sweaty, I was down several layers of clothes, and it occurred to me only then that I was soaking wet. When I took off my gloves my fingers were bone white and shriveled up like prunes. My feet were even worse. It took me over an hour to warm up, most of which I was shivering so bad I could have dang near bitten my tongue off.

Cold is one thing, cold and wet is a kind of pure torture.

Despite all that unpleasantness, I had a fun time. I met so many people it was amazing! It was like we were all banded together in this insanity of running a race in what can only be described as horrific conditions. I love meeting people, so it just added to my fun factor.

I am glad it's over, but I would totally do it again. I could only hope it would be minus the "Wintry Mix."

Goin' to the Mouse's House

The time has come.

Tomorrow is the Disney Half Marathon race that I stupidly signed up for.

I am a nervous wreck. 50% of that is because of the race and 50% of that is because of the weather.

The forecast? 27 degrees and rain. Some bold weather folks are even reporting snow.

Snow in Florida? It must be the apocalypse.

My question is this--when did the weather become a bigger obstacle than running 13.1 miles in this scenario?

But I am going, and I am running. And I will finish, because after all, I finish everything I start. This will be no exception.

In the meantime I will invoke the phrase used by a little train friend of mine:

I think I can, I think I can!

And when I DO, I hope I haven't lost any toes to frostbite in the process.

Yeti or Not...

We're home from vaca and normalcy is settling over us. Laundry is laundering, the boys are at school getting a proper education, so I decided to begin the storytelling of this wild trip we went on.

I will begin at the end. Because beginning at the beginning would make too much sense.

The culmination of our Disney trip was a crazy on my part... My friend Kara called me a few months ago, knowing of my plans to take this trip to Disney. She asked if I'd be her partner in the Expedition Everest Challenge--an event in the Disney Endurance series that involves running a 5K, then completing an obstacle course and a scavenger hunt through Animal Kingdom. It just so happened to fall on the last day of our trip. Without hesitation I said yes! It sounded super fun!

Kara used to work at Animal Kingdom, so we decided that navigating our way through the scavenger hunt part would be cake. All we had to do was survive the run and do a little Survivor-esque challenge and we'd be golden.

Us before the race

Kaleigh and Cole playing before the race. They are good buddies.

The thought didn't really enter my mind that after eight days at Walt Disney World, I might be a little....tired. And boy, all day Saturday as I sweated it out at Epcot, my feet ached, my legs were tired, and I guzzled water as a preemptive strike on dehydration, I was nervous. But as soon as I got there, I fed off the excitement, and Kara and I in our true style, started laughing and having fun.

We were in Wave Five. Kara's husband Nick and his brother Greg were in Wave Two. Waves took off every five minutes. We were lucky to be so far up--there were THIRTEEN waves. We were halfway through the scavenger hunt (the third leg of the race) when people were just starting the 5K portion. That must have sucked for them...

We took off with Wave Five, following our newly minted routine of "turtling", meaning we run kinda slow. We discovered in our training, thanks to Kara's super sweet friend who ran with us once, that there really is something to the "slow and steady wins the race" motto. So we "turtled" along, and when we needed to pass people, one of us would say "hare" and we'd do evasive maneuvers to get around the walkers and/or people who were turtling even slower than us. It was a thing of beauty.

We felt great, really great, during the run. It was hot, we were sweating buckets, but at every water stop we tossed a little on ourselves and it felt good. We were rocking it!

Lila was dancing to the music in her beebop style

Kara's older daughter Kaleigh

Kara's younger daughter Olivia, also a beeboper. (She is a month older than Lila.)

After the 5K portion we took a quick breather of a walk towards the obstacle course, then we took off running again. We got to the first one, and up and over sorta dealy, and I fell right off the thing. Somehow I banged my leg (I have a bruise the size of the Yeti himself) and we laughed our asses off. But up I got, and up and over we went.

Next was a rope ladder thing (don't you love how I know the proper terms for all this stuff?) and I must admit it was a secret dream of mine to run up and over one of those things. There were these two girls on either side of us struggling on it, but apparently that's my talent cause I tore that sucker up. My favorite part of the course!

Next was the balance beam. Here's where I totally felt like part of Survivor. It's hard to balance on a 2x4 after you've just run 3.1 miles, I do say. Kara blasted right over the thing. I was much slower. Balancing in yoga is one of my strengths, I can hold a position for a very long time. But walking across a beam was a totally different deal. I was using my yoga mantras, but they weren't very effective because I was getting pissed off as people who were on either side of me kept hitting my extended arms with their extended arms. And getting pissed off is not very zen. But I made it.

Ahead was the last obstacle--a thing you had to army crawl under. As we ran towards it I said something to Kara like, "Let's just hit the dirt and go!" And boy did we ever! It was hilarious!! Mud and dirt and grass and things that were just so NOT Kara and Ashley. Again, we laughed and laughed and laughed!

We ran across the finish and heard the "Beep Beep" of the timing device marking our finish.

Passing by the fam on our way to the scavenger hunt

Apparently Cole was not happy to see my run by him and not stop

Off the the scavenger hunt. This was the part I was looking forward to most, but not looking forward to having to run, again!

We picked up our book and got these super spiffy light up pens.

We caught our breath and took off running towards the park. It felt good to be passing tons and tons of people who were walking. We were still feeling pretty strong.

And then we felt the raindrops.

First it was just a sprinkle. It became hard to see because if you looked straight ahead you got rain in your eyes. Then the rain mixed with sweat and pretty soon you were blinded. My shirt was covered in dirt from the army crawl thing and there wasn't a clean inch to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. Just as I was about to duck into a bathroom for a towel, the rain was pouring down and I think washed all the sweat off of me. So I guess that was a good thing.

We were off. We ran, and ran, and ran. Many points we were running through water up to our knees. From Camp Minnie Mickey, to Africa, to Asia. I told Kara somewhere along the way that I won't be taking her phone calls anymore lest she get me into a mess like this again! But it was a blast, and true to form, we laughed our way through it until we'd finished our four clues.

We collected our nifty medals. Inside is a fake compass. Made in China.





Nick was at the end waiting for us and he kindly purchased us beers. I was soaked through to the bone, and we were driving home that night!

Kara and me, post race, well earned beer in hand!

Courtesy of Nick's iPhone. : )

We only got this one post race picture, due to the rain and all. Kind of a bummer, but at least we have the shot of victory!

When I got back to the car, Rey had gotten the kids into dry clothes (pajamas!) and he'd found some dry clothes for me. I was impressed that he wasn't an anxious mess after getting caught with all three kids in that downpour. We made it home at 1:15am. I was in and out of consciousness and was deathly afraid that Rey was going to fall asleep at the wheel.

All in all, the Expedition Everest Challenge was a great time, and I am so thankful that Kara called me up that day to get me to do it! We've decided to make it a tradition!

The results haven't been posted yet. Our time doesn't matter to us, we were in it for the experience and just wanted to finish. To be honest, I have no clue what range our time might even be in.

But we did our best and in the end we conquered the Yeti.