So. It happened. The race has come and gone, and now I have ahead of me the incredibly daunting task of giving a blow by blow description and analysis of the entire trip, which I will first sum up in one word: GOODSWEETLORDBABYJESUSMARATHONSARENOJOKE.
The trip itself started out on an interesting foot the night before we even left the Garden State. Alison came over to spend the night at me and Jay's place since we were leaving at 4:45 the next morning. We had big plans to pick up some delicious mexican cuisine from Chipotle and bring it back to the apartment to feast. Plans were derailed a bit when I left my keys dangling on the key rack INSIDE of my locked apartment on the way out. Fast forward to about a half hour later, and Alison and I are in her car. I'm gnawing on a burrito and she is using the lid of a guacamole cup as a spoon to shovel her burrito bowl into her maw (since we didn't think we'd need silverware as we were supposed to be eating in the comfort of my home) while we wait for Jay to step off the PATH train from work with his set of keys. Oh also, it was monsooning outside. So that was really a great way to start this "vacation".
Aside from that, getting to Orlando went off without a hitch. No real line at security, pleasant flight, arrived on time, Disney was wonderful as always at getting our bags, yadda yadda. But on to the running....
At around 9pm Saturday night, after a quick jaunt to the race expo to pick up our bibs and a specatcular dinner consisting almost solely of stuff that used to have a face (next time, more carbs, less meat), we went straight to bed. I awoke to my sister's alarm at 2:45am Sunday morning. TWO FORTY FIVE AM. You gotta be some kind of insane to want to wake up that early (or late?) just to run 26.2 miles. Lucky for us, we're certified whackadoos.
Alison and I dressed and headed out into a glorious 65 degree Orlando night (more about the temperature later) to board Monorail Orange to the starting line at Epcot. I was scared, as depicted here:
After a short ride, some waiting around at the pre-race tents for our corral to be called, and then a loooongggg walk to the official starting line, we finally were ready for the gun (and fireworks, and enthusiastic Mickey Mouse countdown) to go off. Right as all of that happened, Alison lost her iPhone. LOST IT. Couldn't find it anywhere. We were scrambling around the very dark ground for any sign of it as the corrals kept moving forward around us until I got a text message from Alison's phone saying it was found. We met our heroes, the finders of the phone (which included a Brazilian man in a tutu), by the giant balloon designating the E Corral for the handoff. Crisis averted. Race officially underway.
The first 3 miles were fine. They were dark, a bit crowded, and without much to look at aside from an occasional passing monorail and a giant pirate ship photo op with Captain Barbosa/Jack Sparrow (which Alison and I didn't take advantage of), but they were good nonetheless. Then, as sky started getting lighter behind us, we came upon the second character photo op of the race: Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas. Now, if you refer to this post, Jack and Sally are nowhere to be found in my list of acceptable characters to stop running a marathon for. But....
We had to do it. The Nightmare Before Christmas is one of Alison's FAVORITE movies, and you almost never see it's characters hanging out around Walt Disney World (Disneyland, yes, but not WDW). It was here that we decided "F that character list, we're in Disney World." Yes, we were running a marathon, but we knew we could still run it in a respectable amount of time even including three minute breaks here and there for the opportunity to be immortalized in snapshots with some of the most beloved (by us anyway) movie and tv characters of all time. And we absolutely COULD'VE if it werent for the events that transpired later in the race. I'll get to that.
Soon after our brief conversation with The King of Halloween and his poorly constructed girlfriend, we made a few turns and found ourselves on Main Street USA. This part of the race (miles 4-6ish) was INCREDIBLE. There is nothing better than doing something you love (running) in a place that you love (The Magic Kingdom). Alison and I were all smiles throughout this portion. We ran up Main Street toward the castle:
hung a right into Tomorrowland, then a wide left into Fantasyland where we saw my favorite man slash bear/lion/bull and yours, THE BEAST. Oh, and the #1 Disney Princess in my book, Belle (personally I perfer blue dress and white apron Belle to big yellow ballgown Belle, but I wasn't trying to be picky). Unfortunately, the line to meet these glorious specimens was INSANELY long. Like, peace out respectable time long. And while we still had that respecatble time in mind at that point, we settled for a driveby shot of Beauty and the Beast and some strangers.
Soon after this we exited the Magic Kingdom through a backstage area, and headed past the fancypants Grand Floridian where we had a jolly holiday with these guys:
After the speedway, there was a fair amount of boredom. It is a looooong way from the speedway to Animal Kingdom. And that way included an open road with lots of sun, a sewage treatment plant (really, Disney?), and the first inkling of pain from my knee, but nothing unbearable. Speaking of bears, thankfully these guys showed up to break the monotony of the long road to AK:
In the days leading up to the race, I was very excited about getting to Animal Kingdom. I figured that as it was the halfway point, I'd be feeling great knowing I'd soon have more running behind me than I'd have ahead of me. I was so. Wrong. We got through Animal Kingdom without a hitch. I got my picture taken with this lady and her owl on the way in:
And on the way out, we had yet another sighting of our lone fan, Jay, who snapped this picture of us together:
Ladies and gentlemen, this picture is a lie. Well half of it anyway. Alison wasn't lying. But my right hand curled into a fist with my thumb pointed toward the sky is huge and shaming lie. I remember stopping seconds after this picture was taken to exchange a few words with Jay. They were the following: "God, I feel like shit.". It was at this point that my left leg started to feel really crappy. I'd been having knee/IT band problems in the weeks leading up to the race, but this felt a bit different. It was like my entire left leg was giving up on this endeavor WAY before the rest of me. My breathing was fine, my head was still in it, I had eaten a banana about a mile and a half back so I had some energy, I was hydrated (I think, hard to tell through the heat and sweating)... but my DAMN left leg. We ran on for another half mile or so before I had to stop and try to do something about it. I stretched it on the pole of a road sign that was painted to look like some sort of animal (not unike the one behind us and to the left in the picture above). I've replayed this stop in my head about a hundred times since. This, my friends, is where everything came to a sudden and forceful halt in my mind. If I hadn't stopped, I probably could've kept going for the next 12 miles and ignored the pain. But I think stopping made me realize how much it hurt, and how far 12 miles is. From that point I ran about a mile, then had to stop and walk. This pattern of run/walking continued on for the rest of the race. And I am ashamed. I wanted nothing more than to RUN a marathon. The occasional walk to take a drink or stop to take a leak was perfectly acceptable in my mind, but having to walk due to pain was NOT on my agenda. Thankfully, Alison, just showing how worthy she is of her title of Greatest Sister in the World, stuck by me. She was feeling great. Before this stop we were on pace to finish WELL under our goal time of 4:45, and if it wasn't for me, she would've DESTROYED that time, as the entire race she had a bounce in her step and I was borderline positive that she took some kind of upper or steroid before the start (I'm COMPLETELY joking, she was just having a VERY good running day). But instead of forging ahead solo, she stayed with her feeble little sister. THANK GOD. You da best, Al.
Now, it's not to say I didn't have fun the rest of the race, because I did. I was happy in a way that only running through the greatest place on earth can make you happy, but my stupid leg really put a damper on things. As I said, that run/walk pattern continued for the remainder of the race. We would run about a half mile, walk a quarter mile, run a quarter mile, walk a tenth of a mile... and so on and so forth. It wasn't great. But this was a Disney race, and dammit if there weren't some things here and there to keep my mind of the pain. Most notably, spotting the terror that flaps in the night himself, DARKWING DUCK. This was more than a suitable alternative to Launchpad McQuack. Thanks, DW, for helping me through a rough patch:
Continuing on through the course, we ran down yet another stretch of highway toward Disney's Wide World of Sports. This area took up miles 17-20 of the course, but it felt like 40 miles instead of three. I hated it. WWoS is, as it sounds, a very large sports complex. Baseball diamonds, soccer fields, tracks, stadiums, and football fields abound. So essentially, we were running on sidewalks between these spaces, making a RIDICULOUS amount of turns, and there was little to no entertainment. There was some music as we ran into the Atlanta Braves Spring Training stadium, and, as it turns out, a turtle wandered onto the track that was used as part of the course, but I was neither there for that nor do I think it was on purpose.
I was complaining like mad. I was hot, my leg hurt really badly, there were too many turns, I was hungry, the miles seemed too long, We had to run by WAY too many volunteers trying to give us a cup of powerade before we finally got to the water we wanted. The list was endless. To sum up, I was being a weak pansy JERK. And I just wanted to get to the finish line.
We left WWoS and continued on to yet ANOTHER fairly long stretch of highway on our way to Disney's Hollywood Studios. Just before entering DHS, we passed mile marker 22. At this point (much to Alison's relief, I'm sure) my mood picked up. 4 miles is nothing. And as Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline blasted over the speakers we happened to be passing, we made the turn into DHS. We looped around the back of The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, were handed mini hershey bars by smiling volunteers (shoveled a Mr. Goodbar into my gob like it was the last thing I'd ever eat), cut through the Pixar section of the park, down the Streets of America, through a tunnel (Lord, bless that shade) that gives a behind the scenes look at the costume/prop workshops, down past the big Sorcerer Mickey hat, and then up Hollywood Boulevard. toward the front of the park. Now, don't get me wrong, I was still in agonizing pain and running/walking at a snail's pace, but I was getting excited because the finish line was now only about 2 and a half miles away, as is evident by the look on my face here:
FINALLY we were on the road to the last park, Epcot, and the finish line. We ran by Crescent Lake past the Boardwalk Inn, the Yacht Club, and the Beach Club before turning into Epcot's World Showcase via the International Gateway. (Still in pain... stil in a LOT of pain). If you don't know what The World Showcase is, it's a promenade of 11 pavillions representing different countries around the world situated on the banks of a very large lagoon. The course looped us around past every last country, and it was pretty awesome. It was as we were passing between the America and Italy and pavillions that, much to Alison's delight, we found the king of the swingers, the jungle VIP, King Louie:
What the hell he was doing in between America and Italy, though, I will never know. He's from Asia. But whatever. We were but a mile and change from the finish! After running past the rest of the countries of the World Showcase, we crossed into the front of Epcot (Future World), past Spaceship Earth (the big golf ball) and out the side exit into the parking lot to the finish line. Words can not describe the feeling I had when I turned the corner and saw the finish line only YARDS away. I was so happy, so relieved, and so damn excited to sit down for a second that I (along with Alison) picked up the pace for the last hundred yards or so. As our shoes crossed over the timing sensor that was the finish line, we heard the announcer say our names and were greeted by this saucy minx:
FINALLY. We were done. We slowed to a walk, and were presented with what is now my most prized posession, our race medals.
Alison and I are marathoners. It was a VERY ugly race on my part. WAY too much pain and walking than is acceptable, and a HORRIFIC time to show for it (6:04, if you MUST know). But despite all that, it was awesome. By far one of the best experiences of my life. So great, in fact, that we're doing it again. If for no other reason but than to redeem myself and give myself a chance to finish with a respectable time. I will be back, Walt Disney World Marathon (presented by Cigna). I WILL BE BACK. And I'm not gonna hurt myself this time.
In the meantime though, Alison and I have already registered and booked our trip for the 2013 Disneyland Half Marathon in Anaheim, CA. Disney offers a special "Coast to Coast" medal for runners who complete a half marathon-distance or farther race in both Disney World and Disneyland within one calendar year. SO WE'RE GETTING THAT MEDAL. You beter believe it.
I am exausted just from recounting that experience. So I will save the rest of the trip details (the fun part) for later. Cuz considering my plans for the upcoming year (Disneyland Half Marathon plus a few other halves to run that I know of so far... see sidebar) and training for WDW 2014, this blog is FAR from over. You're stuck with me. Deal with it.
Miraculously of sound mind and body (although the body part took a while),
CQ
