Heroes Half Marathon 2013!

I ran my 4th half marathon this year, so far I'm on track to do to 13 13.1 milers in 2013, hopefully I'll keep it up and finish strong.

This time it was the Heroes Half in Everett Washington. Thankfully this one was super close, just about a half hour drive away. The Heroes run is dedicated to our service men and women, a lot of them were running the race as well. Overall the event was small, compared to what I'm used to. Even though they called it a pre-race Expo, I wouldn't really call it that, it was just a room on the bottom floor of a hotel were they had set up a station for picking up your packet and across was a station for race registration. There were no booths or sponsors there or anything like that. But that's okay, that's not what the races are about anyway.

There were two starts to the race, the walkers started at 7:30am and the runners started at 8:00am, the reason for the walkers to go first was so they can get the streets back open by 11:00am. Because it was my husbands birthday weekend, I decided to start with the walkers so I would finish earlier and be able to get back home and celebrate with him. I think there were about 1000 runners registered, they also had a 10K run as well, so very small compared to runDisney races that have about 26,000 people.

They did a little pre-race warm up and then the walkers lined up at the starting line. I was up front with others who were going to run as well, everybody behind us were going to walk. As the gun went off so did we, unfortunately there were no signs telling us where to go, as we got to the end of the parking lot, we all looked really lost and we asked a guy who looked like he was working there where to go and he said just head towards Marysville. Huh???? I was really disappointed in the lack of signs that they had out, there were several spots during the race where I wasn't sure which way to go, thankfully there were three friends running with me who had ran the race last year and they knew what to do, so I just let them go and followed them.

The course was so beautiful, it was kind of a gloomy day, it had been raining by my house when I left but by the time we starting running it had stopped. We ran across three bridges, mostly on the highways until we got to Marysville, we got off and ran through the streets and neighborhoods, to the water treatment facility and then all the way back the same way as we went there. That was another thing that not all the runners were respecting the side of the street that they were running on, so as we were running back, there was some confusion where we should go and what not.

They had ton of water stations on the way to the half way point, but they didn't set them up on both sides of the street. As we were running back we had to cross over the people who were still running the other way to get water and it was kind of a mess, a lot of people just chose not get any or go the every other water station. I was proud of my work, one of the branches in Everett had volunteered at the water station there and were so excited for the runners and gave high fives to everyone!

Also, if you like people to cheer you one, there was a lack of that as well though out the course, except for the finish line, because the streets were closed it was hard for people to get be all over the course, so most decided to stay at the finish line, which was fine with me.

The best part about the race for me was that I saw so many service men and women running themselves, there was even a guy running in his full military uniform including a full backpack!!!! How amazing is that, we all encouraged him on as we ran by him. There was another person running with a bulletproof vest on, I'm pretty sure those way a bit as well. The most amazing thing is that the winner of the race ran with his one year old daughter in the stroller, I saw him pass me and I was thinking to myself how fast he was, there was no competition for him. I read after the race that he was going for a Guinness Book of World Record with it and unofficially he did it. I believe he finished with 1:13. It took me twice as long!!!!! Not that I compare or anything.

Overall it was a great experience, it was hard of course with no training, I had done one 3 mile run since the Mercer Island half and that's it. I'm kind of glad though, because my knee did not heart me at all and my tendonitis was only just a bit sore, other than that I did as good as you can without training.

I've learned from my mistakes, my next half is only two weeks away, that's the Portland Rock'n'Roll half. I've been training pretty well for it, not as much as I would like of course, its hard to get the long runs in for me. I do the 3 mile runs on my lunches at work every other day and then I work out my legs and arms the other days at the gym. I'm trying to get back to my best time at the last Seattle Rock'n'Roll, so we'll see.

Keep checking back for more of my running stories,

Keili

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

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

Neverland Family 5K and runDisney Kids Races 2013

I'm back with the runDisney Neverland Family 5K and Kids Races that took place in Disneyland and were part of the Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend races.

These were my first ever runDisney races and since I was planning on getting my Coast to Coast medal, I figured that I might as well take part of all the weekend races, since we were going to be there anyway. Check out my other blog posts about the Expo and my videos on YouTube!

Both of these races took place on Saturday, January 19th, 2013. The Neverland Family 5K was at 5:45AM, I had set my alarm for 4:30AM, but I had all of my stuff ready from the night before, so I put my costume on and I was ready to go. I used the same costume that I had planned on wearing for the Tinkerbell Half Marathon. Unfortunately I had only bought one blanket with me and I wanted to save that for the Half Marathon, so I ended up using the Tinkerbell half marathon tech shirt that came with registration. It worked out perfect since it was a long sleeve shirt and it was a bit chilly in the morning.

I made my way down to the hotel lobby by 4:45AM, I was the first one there, but there were more people who came as we waited for the shuttle bus. It was nice that they had free rides all through the weekend. The shuttles were running every 20 minutes, so once it came it was a short ride over to Disneyland. I should have given myself a little bit more time, I didn't know how long I would have to wait for the bus, I think I must have just missed it, so I did end up waiting for 20 minutes or so.
The starting line was right by the castle, which was beautiful. It was all lit up purple and later on they had swirly designs playfully scanning across the castle. They didn't really have corrals assigned in this race, although they were calling out corrals A, B and C, we didn't have anything on our bibs. I made my way up to the front though, I though i was going to run it in about a half an hour. There were a lot of kids and families running, and since it was a Family 5K they did not time it. As I waited there they had a stage set up in front of the castle and had a pirate themed hosts keeping us entertained. Once we were almost ready to start they walked us a bit father up to the side of the castle where I could see the actual starting line. Sean Astin was in the front row, running this race as well and then the fireworks started and I was off.

The course was very easy, they had characters on the side of the road, just like I had heard about. They did not however have professional photographers by the characters, so you had to bring your own camera if you wanted to take pictures. They did have them on the course, so I got some cute pictures from the race in addition to my own. At the very end just before the finish line they had Mickey and Minnie waiting for you, I got my picture and to the finish I went.

 

It was still dark when I finished, I got my medal and my food box. They did have a cute Peter Pan reusable bag that you could put your stuff in, which was super helpful. I walked back to the bus stop where the shuttle had dropped us off and there was nobody there. I happened to come across a bus driver who said that the shuttle did not start going back until 7:20 and I was done with my race by 6:15sh. I most certainly did not want to wait there for an hour. I was disappointed in that they did not plan that better, they should have had some sort of transportation going back to the hotels. Oh well, I was a little frazzled by that and didn't really know how to get back, so I put the hotels name on my phone, but it took me in the wrong direction. I walked so far out of my way before I realized that this was not right, so I turned back around and just walked back to Downtown Disney were I knew how to get back to my hotel. It took me probably an hour to finally get back. My husband and son were still sleeping, so I took a quick shower and by that time they were up and off to Disneyland we went.
The Happiest Place on Earth - TRUE STATEMENT!

runDisney Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend Expo 2013

I know this post is a little late, but being a Mom and having a full time job, doesn't really leave me much time for anything else. Here it is anyway, better late than never right.

We arrived in LA on Friday January 18, we live in Seattle so it was just a quick 2 hours flight or so. We flew into the John Wayne airport in Orange County which was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyy more convenient than LAX and it was much closer to Anaheim as well. Definitely recommend that if you are going to Disney. We got in about 10:00am and we had planned on spending some time at Newport beach and just hanging around that are for a little while. My little boy is a beach baby and he loves the water and the sand so much that he could spend all day playing in it and running around. The weather was beautiful and the sun was shining, so we spent a few hours at the beach and then rode the Ferris wheel and played some arcade games. After that we were ready to head for Disneyland.


We stayed at the Holiday Inn Anaheim, I thought the hotel was very nice and clean and much bigger than I thought. We got a great room with a Kings size bed and lots of room for Chase to play. We wanted to rest a bit, so we played some games and I unpacked a little and then I decided to go to the Tinkerbell Half Marathon Expo. My husband and son stayed behind, we were going to meet up at Downtown Disney and have dinner once I was done.

The hotel was walking distance to the Expo, which was held at the Disneyland Hotel. It was not at all crowded by the time I got there at about 4:00PM. I had to pick up my packets on Friday because I was running the Neverland Family 5K and my son was running the Kids races on Saturday morning before the expo opened. They had set everything up very conveniently, I walked downstairs first and that's where they had set up all of the packet pick ups. I picked up my Tinkerbell Half Marathon packet and shirt, then the Neverland Family 5K packet, then the Kids races packet and finally the ChEAR squad packet. That's where they also gave the pins and the necklaces if you had pre-ordered them, so I got all of my things and I headed upstairs. That's where they had the Official Merchandising area set up, the speakers and ton of other booths that sold all sorts of running related merchandise.

 

New Balance was there with their new runDisney running shoes, I wanted to buy them so bad, but they were kind of pricy at $125.00 and I just wanted to think about it and I figured since I was going to the Princess Expo a month later I would buy them from there if I still wanted them.

I looked around the booths, but nothing really stood out to me and I didn't want to spend too much money anyways, but I did want to get something from the official merchandise section. I ended up getting the Tinker Bell mug and the runDisney Mickey Vinylmation with the little Tinker Bell medal and the vinyl Mickey ears magnet.

Once I was ready to leave, right by the doors they had set up a little photo opportunity with the Tinkerbell Half Marathon background. They had cast members there taking your photo with your own camera, which was nice so you weren't forced to buy the photos, you can just use your own.

I had so many bags as I was leaving, I consolidated them all into one and off I went to meet my husband and my little boy. We had an awesome dinner at the House of Blues and went back to the hotel and crashed early. My race was at 5:45am the next day!!!!

 

Mercer Island Half Marathon Finished!

Last Sunday I finished the Mercer Island Half Marathon with a time of 2:21. Not too bad for me, since I had not trained for this since my last half in DisneyWorld 4 weeks ago. My tendon was just hurting me too much and I didn't want to irritate it even more.

Just a quick race recap:
I picked up the race packed at a small expo at the Mercer Island Community center the day before. They had some vendors selling shirts and local businesses and sponsors there. I didn't buy anything while I was there, but did pick up some freebies, like an emergency kit and some tote bags.

I was a little worried about race day transportation because parking on the Island is very limited and they started the half marathon walkers before the runners at 7:00, my race was at 9:00. I didn't think that there was going to be any parking available by the time I got there so I just decided to park at the closest Park and Ride and then take the bus from there. The buses were free for all the runners, which was super nice, so I didn't have to worry about carrying change on me or anything.

Once I got to Mercer Island it was just a short walk to the Community Center where the starting line was. They did offer gear check, but I try not to deal with that if I don't have to since the lines are always so long. They had bagels, oranges and bananas before and after race. Odwalla was a big sponsor, they had a tent set up with free samples and goodies. After that I made my way to the starting line, they didn't have corrals, just different colored flags to stand behind depending on what your pace was going to be. I stayed towards the front though.

Once the race started I was feeling great, I was blasting "This Girl is on Fire" by Alicia Keys on repeat for the first three miles to get me started and it really made get a good start, I think :)  I love that song, its really inspirational and makes me want to run faster and do better. I had brought two packets of energy gummies with me. I had the first pack at about mile 4 and was feeling good and the second pack at about mile 7. They had lots of water stations all thru the course and the best part was that we were running around an island that is mostly residential, a ton of the residence were out in front of their homes cheering us on. Some even had set up their own mini water stations and were handing out candy like twizzles and skittles. Two little girls set up a lemonade stand in front of their home. It was so sweet and it was amazing to see the support from our community.

At mile 8 is where I normally start crashing, I was actually feeling great. I was even thinking to myself, what am I doing different this race that I feel so good that this point, but I could not figure it out. Oh well, I was happy and just kept going, the course was quite hard, due to all the hills there. At mile 5, 8 and the finish were all steep uphill battles, but you always know what goes up, must come down, so there was always a reward of going downhill afterwards.

Overall I really enjoyed the race and I would do it again in a heartbeat. This was the 41st year of the Mercer Island Half!!

See you there next year :)

Oh, FYI they had major discounts for other races in the area after the finish, so I signed up for the Heroes Half in Everett at the end of April. We'll see how I do! I'm officially three for three for half marathons this year (one every month) and now I'm registered for the fourth.