Day 2 of 42.4 Mile Of Fun: Half Marathon

Since this was my 6th half marathon and I've talked about my half marathon experiences in the past I'm just going to post some photos and highlights from that day.

Highlights:

*IT WAS HOTish!!! It was in the 60's when we started.

*Taking Matt's picture "peeing" in the bushes with his WDW Radio Running Team shirt on. (Picture was later tagged on Facebook as Lou Mongello).

*Starting the race with 3 great supporters.

*Matt stopping to direct the band.

*Losing Matt because he wanted to stop for a picture of Jack and Sally

*Seeing my family and friends cheering for me in the Magic Kingdom.

*As always, running through Cinderella Castle

*It really got hot once the sun came up and you were running towards it.

*Brian literally running circles around me.

*Matt catching back up with us.

*Thong girl. Somethings you should never see on the course.

*The guys doing push-ups for Sarge and Sarge never seeing them do it.

*Matt flying the bird. (Hard to describe)

*Phineas and Ferb with no line!! Love them!!

*The guys yelling/cheering for me in the restroom at Epcot. Me yelling back to shut-up!! When I came out, Matt high-fived me and asked if I washed my hand. I told him no because he was yelling at me. (You almost had to be there to really appreciate how funny this was)

*Finishing the race with friends. And somehow losing Matt again!

Day 1 of 42.4 Miles Of Fun: 5k Family Fun Run

     I know I'm behind on updating the blog from marathon weekend but I needed a few weeks to recover from the cruise and all those races. Most important part is I survived and I have medals to prove it!!

     Friday morning was Disney's 5k Family Fun Run. The fun run is just that, fun. It's not a timed race but they do like you to finish within a hours time or so since it does go through a park. We all met up before the race started so we could walk it together. I decided months ago I was going to walk since I still had 39.3 miles to do between Saturday and Sunday. This was Cassidy's second 5k race in Disney but Jeanette and Nick's first Disney race and I wanted them to enjoy it and take it all in.

    The 5k started in the parking lot of Epcot. This year because they increased the amount of participants they placed people in corrals instead of asking people to line up by the pace they thought they were going to do it in. This was fine but it also drug out the time until you really started, especially since we were in "D" and the only ones behind us were the strollers. As always they sing the National Anthem and set off fireworks when the first corral starts.

     When it was our turn to start we started out at a nice, relaxing pace. About half way through the first mile was the first character greeting. I told Cassidy the rule was she had to stop for one character photo since her first 5k she refused to stop at all. Lucky me, the first characters were her favorites, Chip and Dale.

    
     The first mile basically is through the parking lot and backstage area. The mile 1 marker is right at the back side of Test Track. When you enter the park you are in World Showcase by Mexico. Norwegian Daisy was out greeting everyone and posing for pictures. As we walked around the showcase we also saw Colonial Goofy, French Pluto and Canadian Donald. I've seen Goofy dressed like that before but never Pluto or Donald.

 

      Around the last mile, Cassidy decided that she was going to take off without us. While I knew she would be okay I was kinda concerned because there was a huge number of people this year and at one point we couldn't see her anymore. That is until we came into the finish line chute. There she was cheering for us with her medal. I just shook my finger at her because I knew Jeanette was going to give her heck for taking off. Jeanette is like an aunt to her and was her babysitter years ago. I just stood back and laughed at her.

     So now I had 3.1 miles in the books out of the 42.4 I needed to do. I love doing the fun runs because you can just laugh with friends and get a "medal" for doing it.