This was one of the best days of my life! No lie! Seriously. I did it. Words cannot express what this day meant to me, but I will try! The night before the race we got to bed by 9pm. I had to leave the condo by 4:20am to get to Disney around 4:30am! Did I say I? yes I did. We decided I would drive myself to the race and run it without a family fan club. They would NOT enjoy their day if they got up at 4am. Well, Hayden Lee may have, but no one else would have! She's our early riser. I wasn't at all bothered by this. I wasn't running this race for anyone but myself. I was nervous of the parking situation at Epcot, but only because I had no idea of what to expect. After almost forgetting my coffee (what was I thinking!?) I made it on the road about 4:25am. Wowza. I am NOT a morning person! You would not believe the traffic at Walt Disney World that morning. It was CRAZY! I was in total disbelief. I finally got into the Epcot parking lot around 4:45 am and was parked in the very last row of the parking lot.
After parking the car, I had a little twinge of sadness that I was alone. Many people were arriving with two or three people they were running the race with and here I was all by my lonesome. Before heading to the starting line, I found the line to the porta potty and met some ladies. We chatted while we waited the 20 minutes for the bathroom. One of the ladies was alone and we chatted a bit, although the only thing we had in common, AT ALL, was running. After the bathroom stop we headed over the the starting corral for our grouping. It was a twenty minute walk to the start area. We were in the second corral. Each corral was set up by proof of race time. Since I had sent in my proof of race time from the Monster ten mile race I was able to be in corral B to start the race. So much excitement in Corral B. People were chatting about the other races they had done. There were many ladies dressed as pricesses! There was a princess host near the starting line chatting away to the crowd on her microphone. She was making jokes about things like wishing she had bought stock in tutus! There were quite a lot of tutus, that's for sure! Then a blast of fireworks went high in the sky for the elite runners to start the race! Everyone was screaming! Then the fireworks for corral A followed by loud cheers! Then the fireworks for corral B. Woohoo! We were off! It was just a few minutes after 6am and my dream race was starting:)
Grey's is on, so I will have to come back to this later! Five days later...Kim, sorry to keep you hanging for soooo long! I hope the rest of the post is as amazing as my race was!
It was starting to get light out as we were running from Epcot to The Magic Kingdom, a road we had driven several times in the past few years. As the sun started to come up there was smog along the water at the side of the road. Trams were passing and honking as they were driving our cheerleaders to The Magic Kingdom. the runners were waving and hollaring to the trains. People were starting to shed their layers. There were people along the side of the road picking up the layers as we dropped them. The layers would be donated. The mile one marker was fast approaching. It was a beautiful painting. It had the time marked on it. After the marker there were Disney Characters waiting to have their pictures taken with the runners. The pros stopped and had a photo taken:) I wasn't stopping for anything:) I didn't want to slow down my time! each mile mark had a different painting and different characters to take photos with. it was fun to watch as I ran past. I was in shock that people would stop to take photos during a race, but still thought it looked like fun:)
Right before we got to the Magic Kingdom parking lot I shed my extra large Addidas jacket. It was a little big, but something I had enjoyed wearing for the past year. I felt like I was actually shedding a layer of myself like I have in the past year and a half. It was liberating. As we were about to enter the parking lot, we went by the raceway. You know the one where you hear the race cars roaring by as you park to get into Disney? Well it was soooo cool. One of the race cars was parked outside the track and we ran right by it. By the car there were several race car drivers cheering us on! They were not half bad looking either, who cares if they were being paid to be there!
