Holy smokes I can’t believe I made it!  This past weekend wrapped up my first ever Disney Half Marathon and I was so glad I took a chance to do it.  If you’re ever considering a Disney race, read on to see what you’re in store for.

The signups for this race are fierce as it’s got the one-two punch of taking place during Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival and usually good weather.  I was on it and signed up as soon as registration opened.  They did have early signups for passholders but those sold out immediately!
A huge joke on me is that even though we live here and have minimal travel expenses, it also entails starting training in August in Florida….basically on the surface of the sun.  I made it all the way to the 9 mile week of training when whoopsie, my gall bladder had to come out.  The pressure of getting a PR was off since I couldn’t do the last 4 weeks of training.  This made my number one goal for the race “don’t die” (not a joke), followed by “have fun!”

The race Expo was pretty much standard with a nice selection of combo Disney/running themed items.  One side note that is important for anyone coming to the Expo with kids – you CANNOT bring strollers into the Expo buildings.  Knowing this, I wore baby in the carrier and was lucky enough to carry my little 35 pounder crying through half the Expo (yay!).  I figured the race would be a breeze if I could make it through the Expo.  Little son was my photographer below hehehehe. That’s a before and after of me finding the champagne booth by the way 😉

Race morning meant getting up at 3am to be at Epcot by 4am. For the Princess 5k last year I went as the Queen of Hearts….

…but I wanted to come up with a costume that was basically running gear with a smidge of costume to keep comfortable. I was surprised that quite a few people recognized me as Mulan so I figured that was a win from the start!

The race corrals were very well done and I loved the variety of characters along the race.  Honestly, considering 80% of the race is along Disney backroads, it went by quickly.  Not even to mile 1 yet and I’m stopping to get a pic….

Matthew and I started in different groups so I was so excited to see him suddenly at Mile 4!  We met for 30 seconds for a character pic and then it was off to the races again!

Most people were done with character photos during the last mile, but I hopped in as I knew my kiddos love Phineas & Ferb.  You can see from my face how giddy I was and I had upped my pace in the last mile to a sprint!

After the race, there were plenty of opportunities for character photos as well which was a nice touch.  The race was really expertly ran and you could tell Disney had this down to a science.

My only womp womp was the race after part which took place at Epcot from 8pm-1am.  Matthew and I were going to split the time there so we didn’t have to get a sitter.  Little did I know….I didn’t even get into the park till 8:30 due to ticket lines, then most everything was shut down between 9-10 while they wait for the everyday parkgoers to leave.  Which made leaving by 10pm pretty much not an option.  There also was QUITE a discrepancy between the party employees and the everyday park employees.  Any Epcot employee I asked about the after party literally said they had no idea what was going on.  So that would be my biggest area of improvement for RunDisney in the future.

Overall it was a super fun race.  On a whim I had signed up for the January Walt Disney World Half Marathon and now I feel I’ll have a chance to both mentally AND physically prepare for this race!  See ya real soon RunDisney!