runDisney Princess Half Marathon 2013!

 I finally completed the runDisney Coast to Coast Challenge. It was the most wonderful experience I've ever had and I was able to cross off some things on my Bucket List.

If you've read my previous posts you'll know that we were in Disneyworld for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon Weekend. It was a very special year for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon, it was their 5 year anniversary, I love that they designed a special medal just for that and that all the commemorative items had the years on them (2009-2013).

 The half marathon was on a Sunday and because I had a bad experience and almost missed the start time for the Tinkerbell Half Marathon 5 weeks earlier, I had set my alarm to 3:00AM, 3:05AM and 3:10AM, just to be sure. I had actually had a dream the night before that I woke up an hour after the start time and rushed there and what not, so I wanted to make sure I would wake up on time. I got hardly any sleep, in fact I was up about 10 minutes before the first alarm would have gone off anyway. I had set up all my running gear and costume the night before again and just got ready and off I went. The hotel had a special gathering to wait for the bus for all the runners in front. There were already a bunch of people there when I got there. I do have to be honest and say that they did not have the pickups scheduled very well. We stayed at the All-Star Movie Resort, this is a third hotel in the All-Star Resorts, all the buses that were sent to pick up the runners kept filling up at the first two resorts so none of them made it to us. We waited for what seemed forever, at least 45 minutes, finally there was a cast member who called the bus driver directly and asked them to come directly to the Movie Resort and then we got onboard and off we went, I felt bad because it did not fit all the runners, so others had to wait even longer.

Once we got to Epcot the walk was faily close to the bathrooms and water station before the starting line. Then it was about a 10 minute walk to my corral, I was again in corral "A" and this time since I had more time and there weren't that many people in my corral, I was able to go to the very front of the starting line. Maybe this sounds weird, but it was a really cool feeling to be right there with all the Elite runners and the stage was right next to it, rather than seeing it on the big screen.

Sean Astin was just hanging out there while waiting for his interview, and I yelled out "Sean can I get a picture with you" and he said that he had to finish something and that he was going to be back, I figured that was never going to happen, but it did, he finished his interview and came back looking for me, so I got a picture with him and another girl right next to me got one too and then he left. I was so lucky and it was so sweet of him to do that. Ali Vincent, the first biggest loser female winner was there as well, she was so nice and talked to all of us and took ton of pictures.

I waited for about an hour or so and then it was time to start. All the Elite runners lined up in front of the ribbon and we all got to stay behind it, there were about 10 of them or so. Once the fireworks went off we were ready to run, at first I tried to keep up with all the people in the front, but I soon realized that wasn't gonna happen, so I slowed down my pace to make sure I can finish the race. It started out on the freeway and at 5:00AM it was already so hot and humid, which I was not used to being from Seattle and all. About 5 miles in I saw the sign for Magic Kingdom, it made me smile and pick up my pace just a tad. The first characters we came to was all the villans, there were about 7 of them or so, the queen from Snow White, Kruella from 101 Dalmatians, the mean sisters and the Mom from Cinderella. I had to stop for them since there were so many of them then came Lightning McQeen, this one was for my son and then we entered Magic Kingdom. It was still dark and Main Street and Cinderellas Castle were all lit up, tons of people cheering on. I was able to get a couple of pictures in front of the castle and there were a couple of very nice EMT guys who took my picture on the side of the castle, as we ran through Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land and Frontier Land, that's where I saw Jesse from Toy Story, had a get a picture with her. then it was the castle, the line for Minnie and Mickey was sooooo long, but I had to wait, I could not, not get a picture with them at the Castle. The girl behind me took a picture of me and the back of the castle and finally I got a couple of pictures with Queen Minnie and King Mickey and off I went. Tons of photographers were right outside of the castle and then we started making our way back to Epcot.

At around mile 8 is when the heat and humidity started getting to me and my mind was playing games with me and I kept telling myself that I've done this before, no problem, I'm almost there, now I just need get back to Epcot and I'll be good to go. Then I heard the song on the loudspeakers by Alicia Keys "This Girl is on Fire" on repeat, and they had a fire truck and fire fighters out there cheering us on. There was something about that song that just gave me new energy to keep going. Every since then that has been my go to song for my runs and every time it comes on it makes me want to be faster and keep going stronger.

Right before mile 11 hit, it was all uphill and this was tough, at this point I saw Jeff Galoway right in front of me, I was trying to keep pace with him, but man is he fast, his walk-run-walk program works, I'm thinking about trying it out, because I was so exhausted by that time that I could not keep up with him. Granted his is an Olympic Gold Medalist, but I thought I had an age advantage which apparently ment nothing :) Finally I saw the Epcot ball and I knew I was almost at the finish line. I heard them announce that Sean Astin finished and I told myself to just finish it and then its all over with. It felt so good to finally cross the finish line, I could not even remember if there were characters at the finish line, I just wanted to finish.

This was by far the hardest race that I've ran, I think the heat and humidity had everything to do with it. The course and the characters where amazing, but when you are coming from a cold rainy Seattle winter to a hot humid Orlando winter, it makes a huge difference in how you perform.

I had my Tinkerbell Half Marathon medal in my running fanny pack during the run, so when I finished I put it on with my Princess Half Marathon medal and then I went on to finally get my Coast-to-Coast medal. When they were cutting off my wrist band, I asked them if I could keep it to put in my scrapbook, they wouldn't let me, so I asked it I can at least just keep the part where it says Coast-to-Coast challenge and they cut it out for me and let me keep it!!! RunDisney is the best, they really do an amazing job putting these events together. I'm hoping to do a lot more of them in the future. They are far for me and expensive as well, but a girl can hope, right?

If you were there, let me know what you thoughts were about the race below!!!

Keili

Mickey & Minnie Royal Family 5K & Kids Races 2013



I know that this is a little late, but better late than never!

As you already know that my mission was to complete the Disney Coast to Coast Challenge, so this was the reason we were in Disneyworld this time. And again as I did with the Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend, I wanted to be part of as many events as possilbe, therefor I ran the Mickey and Minnie Royal Family 5K and my son ran two races, he did the Kids 200 meter dash and the Mickey Mile (one mile run).

I'll start with the 5K, I registered for this race in the stroller division, this way we got two medals, one for me and one for my son Chase. Unlike the Tinkerbell weekend where I wore the same costume, I wanted to have different one for this race because Chase wanted to dress up as Darth Vader and I thought that it would be really fun if I dressed up as Princess Leia. So I made both of our costumes and I think they turned out amazing, but you can be the judge of that :)

The race started at 5:45, I had put the alarm for 4:00 and I laid out our costumes and all of the stuff I needed for running the night before and waited until the absolute last minute to wake up Chase. I felt so bad, he was so tired, he was still asleep as I was putting his costume on and put him in the stroller. Once we were ready, I made my way down to the front of the hotel where the shuttles were leaving from and there were already so many people there. I was the only one with a stroller, so they let me on the bus first which was super nice, I did have to take him out of the stroller and carry him to the bus though, but he still did not wake up. Everybody loved my costume, they were all telling me how creative it was, unfortunately Chase was asleep, so they didn't get to see his cute costume.

Finally we got to the parking lot where the race started from, the stroller divison was the very last corral for safety reasons. They did come and had a little talk with us before the race. The main thing was that we weren't allowed to run with the strollers and we had to stay behind the rope the whole time. There were two guys who were going to be walking and holding the rope in front of us, so we just had to stay with them the whole time, they were going to walk the 16 minute mile pace.

We watched all the corrals go and finally it was our turn, Chase was still sleeping in the stroller and it was still super dark outside. We started walking to the starting line which was at the end of the parking lot and just a few minutes after we got there the fireworks went off and off we went. So it is impossible to walk the 16 minute a mile pace or so I found out anyway, because as the guys starting going, I could not keep up walking so a bunch of us just started running and nobody said anything even though it was prohibited. Just a short run later we made it to Epcot, countries around the world. The first picture stop was Mulan, I stopped, but Chase was still sleeping, but it was a cute picture nevertheless. The lines for the pictures got kind of long, it was mostly princess' like Snowhite and Dopey, Belle in her everyday outfit, one of the Aristocats, Jasmine and finally right before the Epcot ball it was Donald and Daisy dressed up as a king and a queen. The run was great, it was amazing running around the countries as everything was still closed and quiet. Chase did wake up right after the first picture stop with Mulan and got to enjoy the rest of the run. We both got our medals, took a finishers pictures and off we went to the Mickey mile race.

They packed these races super close together, so we barely had time to run over to the kids races and change bibs. The Mickey mile was cute, it ran past the Epcot ball and back finishing at the parking lot. This was hard for him, I did have to carry him part of the couse, I think partially too that he was still super tired, it stared at 8:45 I believe and then I was rushing to get his bib on and out of the stroller and he was getting a little crancky. We had fun during the run though and he finished strong at 16:47, I was so proud of him. Goofy was waiting for us at the finish line, we got high fives. Next we had to rush back to make it to the 200 meter dash by 9:15. My husband met us there and we all ran that one together. I managed to lose Chases bib for this race so we just kept the Mickey Mile one on and it worked. This one was very short, it was basically the last 200 meters of the Mickey Mile. I was kind of bummed that the medals were the same for the Mickey Mile and the Kids Races, but Chase didn't really care, he was just excited that he got more medals than I did. Love that kid to death, he is just so cute and cuddly.

That's kind of it, we ended up spending the rest of the day at Epcot since we were already there and really enjoyed Star Tours, again.

The weather was crazy hot, as you can see before 5:00AM it was already at 72 degrees, with a high of 90 degrees for the day. Crazy hot for us Seattlites :)

Disney Movie All-star Resort Review 2013

The reason I wanted to write a review on this Disney property is that I wanted you to know what kind of an experience we had and what my family and I thought about it.
We went to Walt Disneyworld is for the runDisney Princess Half Marathon. Because we were traveling all the way from Seattle and it's very costly, we wanted to stay at a Disney value resort to try to save as much money as possible.

As we were driving to the All-Star resort we realized that the Movies one is the farthest one back out of all the three All-Star resorts. So it takes that much longer to get to the parks. But okay, that's not so bad, right? As we were driving to check in, the front of the resort was very plane, just some huge stars on the building and that's about it, okay, I can handle that. As we walked in, It really took me by surprise, how cold and empty the lobby felt. The lobby was huge, they really could have done so much with it. Across from the check in area they had a little movie theater area set up, again they could have made this so awesome. Instead it had a few chairs with a small TV that was playing old Mickey cartoons. This is the Movie resort, the room themes were Toy Story, Fantasia,  101 Dalmatians etc, they should be playing those cartoons that fit the resort and that kids can have interest in. My four year old son watched it for a minute because didn't get it and then I had to keep him entertained for what seemed like forever while my husband was checking in.

Once we were all checked in, we drove to our building. I really wish I would have known that this was a MOTEL and not a hotel :( When they say "resort" I assume it going to be a nice place, well needless to say I was really disappointed. The room itself was small, the sink was located outside of the bathroom, so when I was getting ready for my races Saturday and Sunday morning at 3:00AM I had to do it in the dark as I would have woken up my husband and son, and a toddler who wakes up at 3:00AM would not have fun at the parks, do you agree?

The décor of the rooms was worse than a Motel 6, honestly it had a very 70's feel with the colors being orange and blue and it didn't feel very Disney. The only Disney things that I saw was that a towel was shaped into a Mickey Mouse shape on the bed and the border along the top of the wallpaper was Disney themed. The little shampoo bottles and soaps were also Mickey Mouse themed.
I just think that they could have done so many cool things with the theme and didn't really maximize the Disney theme. When I go to Disney, I want all Disney all the time. I can never get too much Disney and my son was all excited about being there, however when we were in our room it didn't feel like we were in Disneyworld. Also keep in mind since it is a MOTEL, there will be people walking by your door and windows way late into the night, no matter where your room is located at.

The beds were comfortable, but the room was really small, there was a table and chairs, but to be honest, they took up so much room, that I'd rather would have had more floor room, so my son could have played with his cars on the floor. Its hard to play with cars on the bed, but we made the best of it. Thankfully we didn't spend too much time at the room.

Our building was the Toy Story building, just outside is where they had a little play area that had a huge Woody and Buzz statues, which said no climbing. If you are going to put no climbing on those, you really need add other kinds of things to the play area where kids could climb on and have fun at. Don't get me wrong it was super cute, they had it look like Andy's room, with a huge door and everything, but other than look at the statues, there was nothing fun for kids.

The pool was nice, they did have a small kiddie pool off to the side as well that had warm water and plenty of room for the little ones to splash around. We went there in February and it was pretty cold, so the pool water was so cold, we did take a dip in it, for fun. I would imagine though that the kiddie pool would get super crowded during the summer time, since it is pretty small.

The food building was right next door by the pool, it was all cafeteria style, we only ate there for one breakfast and it was nice, the food was reasonable and there were things you could buy to bring into the parks with you.

Also, as we were in the parks and as part of the Disney Princess Half Marathon while we were waiting for the shuttles to come to take us to back to our resort, we realized that there were about three times as many shuttles going to the other resorts than to the All-Star Resorts. Also, all three All-Star Resorts got put together on the same shuttles most of the time, so it was always so full since there were two other resorts it was stopping at.

This is purely just my experience there, we spent four nights there, to give you an idea how long we were there for.

Let me know if you have any questions and hope you have a better experience :)

Keili

Disney Princess Half Marathon Registered!!!

I finally registered for the Disney Princess Half Marathon so I can complete the Disney Coast to Coast Challenge. I'm so excited. In addition, I figured since we were going all the way to Disney World (its as far as you can get in the continental US for us from Seattle), I might as well sign up for as many events as I can.
So I'm also doing the Disney Royal Family 5K stroller division. I have a 4 year old son, and yes I know he is too old for a stroller, but its cheaper for us to do it this way and we both still get medals :) which he will be super excited about it. Then later that day he will be doing the Kids Races for another medal, he is going to have so much fun, I cannot wait to see everything thru his eyes. And then finally Sunday morning I will be running the Disney Princess Half Marathon!!!!

So I came across the Disney Princess half marathon by accident by watching videos on YouTube and having people mention it on there and I was instantly intrigued. Now this was about a year ago or so, but every since I saw those I have been researching them and finding out ton of info about the races.
I should metion that I have never, ever run in my life, not counting PE in school of course, but something sparked my interest in it. I couldn't stop thinking about the races and how much fun would it be to run one.

I live in Seattle, so DisneyWorld is exactly the farthest  you can go in the Continental USA for me, but it has become my dream to run this race. the 2012 race was already booked and by the time I was for sure going to go I wouldn't have had enough time to train for it anyway. I decided to start go for the 2013 race. I'm super excited, but since it is really far for us to travel to I wanted to make sure that I can actually run 13.1 miles prior to booking this whole thing and then not being able to finish I figured I can run one of our local half marathons first and go from there. The most popular one of course in Seattle is the Rock'n'Roll half marathon, so I signed myself up and got a training schedule.

Look for posts and pictures of me training, I'm so excited about it.