Disney Princess Race Recap

Back of shirt says, "Run Pretty"

My alarm went off at 2:45am. It was finally race day!! I can't say I slept all that great so getting up at 2:45 was not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Who can sleep before a race anyhow??  Cathy and I got ready in our semi princess get up and headed to catch the bus at 3:45am. They say in order to make the race you must be on the bus by 4am. They weren't kidding. The bus ride to the start of the race at Epcot took forever. I really think our driver was a bit inept at his job. He basically refused to move from the lane that was not moving. Once we got dropped off we knew we still had a 20 minute walk to the start line. This would be my biggest complaint about this race. Not so much the 20 minute walk but the bottleneck of people that prevented you from moving for long periods of time. As an 'always early' person this was starting to make me a little nervous b/c the minutes were just ticking by and I was no where near that corral A I was so proud to start in. Cathy and I finally made our way to the outside of the crowd allowing us to walk faster. Still we heard the gun start for the wheelchair race and yet we were far from our corral. Basically we ran for it. We made it into corral A with no more than 2-3 minutes to spare. I will say I was VERY pleased to see they were stopping you and checking to make sure your bib said corral A before letting you in (huge pet peeve of mine for the mini....walkers should never be in front of runners).
Here we are trying to make our way to the Corral A.

The start line! We are somewhere in that mass of people in Corral A

The race started, and we were off. I think this was the only part of the trip that Cathy and I were on different wave lengths. Not communicating well at all. I don't think we were even a mile into it when I actually thought we were going to get in a fight and separate. That tiff would have been my fault b/c I told her she was not allowed to talk on the phone while we were running b/c that meant she was not trying hard enough. At this point I was still having a hard time not being competitive. She reminded me again that this race was for fun!! Okay my bad.... I quickly got over my sense of being competitive as I watched the balloons of the 2hr pacer fade out of my line of vision. At that point (within the 2nd mile) a switch flipped, and I was just ready to have a fun race. Once we started seeing characters you could stop at and get pictures with, I was excited. I wanted to stop at them ALL! Here is where I would say Cathy and I had a role reversal. Suddenly she wasn't interested in stopping. "Just keep going, just keep going" seemed to be her mantra. She did not actually say that. Okay here is where I should stop and make my disclaimer that race recaps are HIGHLY personal. No two people will ever have the same recap even if the race was run together. I totally welcome my BFF (so don't get mad at anything I say) to write her own race recap on my blog. So back to my version of the story. Our communication had fallen apart. I was confused b/c all the previous day Cathy was having to remind me that this race was for fun. Now I was ready to have what I considered was fun, and she didn't want to stop. Sadly, b/c the weather called for rain, I did not bring my phone. Cathy's waist thing was waterproof and I figured we were staying together so we would use her phone for any pictures. If I had to do it over, I would have taken my phone. I did convince her to stop a total of 3 times. I would say there were probably 15+ opportunities to stop and get pictures. She was willing to stop if the line was short. Together we stopped at Mad Hatter, the evil princesses, and Beauty and Beast.

 Here we are after just running thru castle. Not kidding I have a HUGE smile in every picture! I LOVE races!!

The miles were ticking away. I never felt winded or that the running part was hard. The course took you from Epcot to Magic Kingdom and back. I loved how it started in the dark and became light half way thru. I loved all the characters and things to look at. They had water, Gatorade and port-a-potty's all over the place. I was shocked to see people already at the one mile medical booth. Despite having gone to the bathroom prior to getting in the corral, I had to pee from the start. Usually b/c I am trying hard this urge goes away but maybe b/c I was running a slower pace or  maybe b/c we stopped for pictures (each time taking more than a minute) I never lost this urge. Finally at mile 5 I decided that for the first time ever in a race, I was stopping at the potty. I figured this race was for fun and this feeling was ruining my enjoyment. I told Cathy to keep going and I would catch up. It worked perfectly. I felt great the rest of the time and I enjoyed the sprint to catch Cathy.
That move set into motion my plan to stop at more characters and let Cathy keep running. I knew there was a way to make both of us happy during this race. So that it what I did. I stopped at least 3 more times and then would sprint to catch up with Cathy. From a pace standpoint I would say Cathy was doing great right up until the mile after she said, "you should be proud of me for keeping a 9:20 pace." I was proud of her but b/c of life she only trained up to 9 miles and as she predicted the day before hit a wall of sorts at mile 10. Unlike Stephanie during the Vegas, I got the feeling very quickly that Cathy did not want to hear my words of encouragement. I tried to tone it down. Instead I spent my time screaming and cheering on the crowds (you know...lots of hands in the air scream whooooo hooooooo). I thanked the volunteers. I tried much harder than when I am racing for time to put my cups in the trash can (even heard a volunteer say I love those girls b/c we did this). I just tried to enjoy everything around me.

Now at around mile 11 I knew that Cathy was hurting and tired, but I also knew that she was VERY close to a PR. Her previous PR for a mini was with me at Monumental with a time of 2:07.  Suddenly my competitive spirit returned, and I wanted so bad for her to cross the finish line prior to this time. I tried to push her to the end. She did a great job of making our last mile our fastest (always a goal of mine) and while we crossed at 2:08 we both knew that really that translated into a PR b/c in no other race do you stop to take pictures with characters. She would have been AT LEAST a 2:05. When it was all said and done, I think this made Cathy very happy and I felt on cloud 9 just to have had a FUN run. I enjoyed it. Sure there were times I was dying to go faster but I had a FUN run. I am glad to have done it.

Once again a race I will never forget (b/c I just wrote down my every thought....just kidding)!

Official Stats: Time: 2:08:07. Gender 1768/15802. Division: 303/2549

Our mile splits: 9:29, 9:11, 9:27, 11:10 (very easy to tell when we stopped), 9:10, 9:53, 9:03, 10:17, 9:23, 10:18, 9:34, 9:48, 8:58 and the last 0.3 (on my garmin) was 8:21