Saturday, January 9, 2010

13.1 down...26.2 to go...

The 3:30am alarm hurt. Badly. As much as I wanted to get to sleep early, I tossed and turned until somewhere around 11:00pm. Following a great evening [not only are we here with Maureen and Cory, my sister, brother-in-law, niece and parents are here to witness the insanity. Last night I got a great surprise in that our great friends Cheryl Blank from Maine and the Hollister clan from Vermont came to join in the festivities. Chad, Cheryl, Maureen and I all volunteer at CCFA's Camp Oasis during the summer making the best week of my year] with family, friends and a perfect protein and carb dinner, we were ready to hit the pavement.

We left the hotel at 4am to head to Disney. We got in smoothly and had plenty of time to get ready to endure the 38 degree weather with sleet and rain and head to the start. We were assign Carrol B [I have no idea how many corrals were involved, but they went up to at least J] based on our predicted finish time. Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy greeted all of the runners and whisked us on our way. We ran around the outside of Epcot heading into the main entrance of The Magic Kingdom. We were ushered in and out of public and private areas "seeing" [it is hard to see much over an hour before sunrise] the inner workings of the Disney Empire.

As we wrapped around The Magic Kingdom, we were thrown right into the middle which was great with all of the holiday lights still up and fans all around. We finished our route through the Magic Kingdom with a run through Cinderella's Castle. We headed back out of the park and back towards Epcot. With a quick restroom pitstop, we made the loop back to Epcot for the final 3 miles. We had maintained a strong pace for the first 10 miles and managed to pick it up a little bit as we wrapped through Epcot. We journeyed around the geodesic dome and cranked it up for a strong finish.

Garmin Connect - Activity Details for Disney Half Marathon


After a solid hour and fifty minutes, we had completed 1/3 of our mission. As the sleet had converted entirely to rain and the temperature had dropped 3 degrees, we quickly gathered our medal, some drinks and food and made it swiftly to the car. With the heat cranked, we changed prior to venturing home. A little traffic later, we were on our way. By 8:00am, we had been awake for 5 hours and had run 13.1 miles...not bad for a morning.

Since our return to the hotel, we have each had a 30 minute leg massage, some food and plenty to drink. We are continuing our relaxation for the remainder of the day with another early bedtime tonight. Tomorrow morning...26.2...

Don't forget to track us at
http://live.activeresult.com/msg/MSG-signup.tcl?event_id=3

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