{"id":1537,"date":"2011-03-09T12:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-03-09T17:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_guest\/?p=1537"},"modified":"2022-05-05T13:23:45","modified_gmt":"2022-05-05T17:23:45","slug":"the-princess-crossed-the-finish-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/the-princess-crossed-the-finish-line\/","title":{"rendered":"The Princess Crossed the Finish Line"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bridget, Emily, Gretchen, Sarah, Kerry, Erika<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had the most amazing time during the Disney Princess \u00bd Marathon weekend!\u00a0 If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have that much fun running 13.1 miles, I would have laughed in their face.\u00a0 I never pictured myself EVER crossing the finish line after successfully completing a race.\u00a0 While I was preparing, one relentless training session after another, people would ask how fast I was running and I would cringe because so many people I know are real runners.\u00a0 You know the ones who log miles and miles every week and live from one race to the next?\u00a0 Well, I knew that I was nowhere near their level and I was almost ashamed to admit how slow I was.\u00a0 But then one day I had a personal revelation while running.\u00a0 If I set it as my goal to simply finish the race while running more than walking, than I would be happy with whatever my finish time ended up being.\u00a0 That lifted a huge weight off of my shoulders and from that point on when people asked my time, I would say \u201cslow and steady, but I\u2019m going to finish!\u201d<\/p>\n

I am going to write more in depth about the weekend later, but here are some highlights and race details.\u00a0 We arrived on Thursday and checked into Port Orleans French Quarter, one of the official race resorts that weekend.\u00a0 There were six of us together, four from Houston and two friends from the D.C. area.\u00a0 I had the weekend all planned out, ADRs made, park tickets in hand, and racing on the mind.\u00a0 Our first magical moment of the weekend was seeing the space shuttle fly overhead while we sitting out by the pool.\u00a0 I had never seen that before and it was quite impressive.\u00a0 For our arrival night dinner I had booked \u2018Ohana\u2019s which truly is as good as everyone has said it is.<\/p>\n

We went to the Race Expo on Friday where I got to see my hero, Jeff Galloway.<\/p>\n

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Going into the Expo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Jeff Galoway<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I\u00a0listened to him talk for a few minutes, but it was really just a repeat of the videos on the internet so we moved on to check out the vendors and purchase our official Disney Princess \u00bd Marathon gear.\u00a0 We spent the afternoon wandering around Epcot and went to Magic Kingdom on Saturday.\u00a0 It was nice to spend time together and relax before the race.<\/p>\n

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3:35am!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sunday morning we were up at 3:30am, yes you read that correctly!\u00a0 The last bus was to leave the resort at 4am and we wanted to be sure we didn\u2019t miss it.\u00a0 It was still dark when the bus dropped us off in the Epcot parking lot.\u00a0 We checked our bags at the bag check and began the walk to the start corrals.\u00a0 I was kind of surprised to see that it really did take about 20 minutes to walk to the starting point.<\/p>\n

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Here we begin...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Erika and Sarah wore costumes!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Erika and Bridget<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had been advised that it would take awhile, but I didn\u2019t really believe it could take that long.\u00a0 The walk was good though because it warmed up our muscles and by the time we were in the corral we were ready to go.\u00a0 Just a side note here.\u00a0 Disney is very serious about their start corral assignments.\u00a0 One of my friends put a much slower finish time than the rest of us and as a result she was assigned two corrals behind us.\u00a0 We thought that maybe we could just sneak her up with us.\u00a0 You cannot get away with that. \u00a0Faster runners may move back, but slower runners may not move up and they check and recheck very carefully.\u00a0 I saw a few people removed from the corral before we started for sneaking in.\u00a0 So we were split up right at the beginning.\u00a0 Four of us stayed in Corral C and the other two moved back to Corral E since they were walking together and not planning on running.\u00a0 Each start corral had their own fireworks and official start which was nice.<\/p>\n

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Here are Corral C's fireworks beginning!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Emily posed with some of the sidelines entertainment...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The entertainment along the way was good, but not quite what I was hoping for.\u00a0 I was hoping for more distraction, especially in the later miles, but there wasn\u2019t as much as I thought there might be.\u00a0 Running through the castle was awesome, I loved the energy of the people cheering us on as we ran down Main Street.\u00a0 It was truly magical as only Disney can be.<\/p>\n

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Approaching the castle!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Erika took a few photos for me...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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As the sun was rising we ran into Tomorrowland...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Mile 11 was the worst.\u00a0 I was sore and tired and just wanted it to be over when we had to run UP a slanted exit ramp, off of a 4 lane highway and onto an overpass to head into Epcot.\u00a0 I wish I would have taken a picture of the people behind me while I was on the overpass.\u00a0 It was amazing to see thousands of people running on the highway!<\/p>\n

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Mile 12... almost there!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Into Epcot for the homestretch. How can this not inspire you to run!?!?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we entered Epcot, my cousin (and running buddy) suggested that we \u201cfinish strong\u201d so we kicked it in gear and ran as fast as we possibly could that last mile.\u00a0 People were crowded\u00a0 along the sidelines cheering us on and the thought of the finish line so close really motivated me to keep running.\u00a0 I was ecstatic to cross the finish line because I knew that I had earned my princess medal!\u00a0 It was the best feeling in the world to know that I had accomplished my goal!<\/p>\n

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Emily and Bridget with our Princess Finisher Medals!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

My official chip finish time according to Disney is 2:40:17.\u00a0 I was the 5,738th<\/sup> to cross the finish line which sounds horrible until you realize that there were 13,107 people in the race!\u00a0 I was better than half the people there that morning and I am quite pleased with those results considering that was my first race ever!<\/p>\n

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Post race, after pool time and showers, on our way to dinner.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Waiting for Illuminations to celebrate the day...<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I can\u2019t say that I am hooked on racing.\u00a0 I had a blast and I would love to run the Princess \u00bd again, but in the meantime I think I am going to stick with shorter races with my focus being on 10Ks.\u00a0 Thirteen miles is a long way to run and quite frankly I find the training boring.\u00a0 I don\u2019t love running that far on a regular basis, but I think for a trip to Disney World I would do just about anything!\u00a0 So after eight or nine months of careful planning and training my race is over.\u00a0 It is a bit of a letdown that it is all over.\u00a0 I miss the anticipation of the weekend, of the race itself, although not the training.\u00a0 Regardless I think I may to do it again!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had the most amazing time during the Disney Princess \u00bd Marathon weekend!\u00a0 If anyone had told me a year ago that I would have that much fun running 13.1 miles, I would have laughed in their face.\u00a0 I never pictured myself EVER crossing the finish line after successfully completing a race.\u00a0 While I was…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-walt-disney-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1537"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":86279,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1537\/revisions\/86279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themouseforless.com\/blog_world\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}