Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Tinkerbell Half Marathon 2013!!!


I know that this post is super late, but better late than never, right?
If you are interested, you can check out my other blogs from the Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend, so I'll start this one with the very early wake up call at 4:00am and I later realized this was too late, but more on that later.

I got ready, put my costume on and got my watch and fanny pack :) and off to the hotel lobby I went to wait for the shuttle. There were already a lot of people waiting, so I assumed that the bus was due any minute, but it took it forever to get there and time just kept going by. We thought that we were going to be late to the race, so some people started walking to the starting line. I really did not want to walk, so me and others still kept waiting. Finally the shuttle came, I was super happy, but then it ended up being the longest bus ride of my life. So this was the last shuttle of the morning and it was picking up from 4 different hotels and we were the first ones to be picked up. I guess the good thing is that we got seats on the bus, but it took probably another 20 minutes or so to actually get to Disneyland. We finally made it with 15 minutes to spare. I booked it to the staring line, and I mean I literally ran the whole way from the shuttle drop to corral "A" and I made it with 5 minutes to spare. I could not believe it. Needless to say I learned my lesson and did things a little different for the Princess Half. But wow, I could not believe I made it!


Finally off we went, the course itself was amazing at times, like when running through Sleeping Beauty's Castle and all through out Disneyland and California Adventure. Some of it was just okay, there was quite a bit of running through streets of Anaheim, some people were cheering us on in front of their houses, which was super nice and encouraging. I got a ton of pictures in the parks though, they were very nice at letting me use my own camera, they would actually have a cast member by the characters to just take pictures with your own camera and then a professional photographer. RunDisney thinks of everything, don't they?
I couldn't find anybody by the castle on Main street, so I just asked a guy with a baby stroller if he would take my picture and he totally did, so sweet! As I was coming around the castle to run through it I wanted to get a close up picture so I had my iPhone set on the front camera and was trying to take a picture of myself with the castle in the background and I saw another girl doing the same, so I just asked her if she wanted me to take picture of her and she could take a picture of me and she said "yes", that was awesome and super funny as we are both there trying to get decent pictures we could have just asked earlier :)


Unfortunately I didn't realize that the course ran right by our hotel, once I realized that I texted and called my husband to see if he could come down and cheer me on for a bit, but they were still sleeping and didn't get my message until it was too late. That was kind of a bummer, but nevertheless I kept going strong.

I did not see Mickey and Minnie around anywhere, I'm not sure if I just missed them or they weren't there altogether, oh well, I got some awesome pictures anyway. I had to take a picture of Lightning McQueen and Mater for my son Chase and he is super into Star Wars right now, so when I saw Darth Vader and the Storm trooper, that was another must picture for me. I think I stopped for all but one character picture and it was Princess Aurora and her Prince. I was super proud of my time for this race, considering that I stopped for about 9 or so characters for pictures and few for the castle and I actually stopped and asked an Anaheim police officer for a kids sticker (my son collects them) and it took them forever to find them. I finished with 2:28 I believe, you can check my "Race" page with all the details.


The finish was awesome, they had a marching band playing about a half a mile before the finish line, which got me super pumped up. The last of it was going around a parking lot, finishing with Donald, Mickey, Minnie and Goofy at the finish line. It was an amazing feeling to finish this race since this was why I started my running journey. Truly if I would have never found out about the runDisney races and if my husband would not have agreed to spend his vacation time on my runs, I would have never ever started running. I consider myself very lucky and fortunate to have had this opportunity and hope that my runDisney journey continues with many more runDisney races.


After the race they had runDisney foil blankets and the food boxes and lots of water, Gatorade and ice for you sore legs and knees.

I headed straight to the hotel since we were meeting one of our friends who is a Disney Cast member to let us into the park for FREE! I took a quick shower and got ready, put my much deserved medal on and off to California Adventure we went :)

XOXO
Keili

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