I got all my gear on that I hadn't worn to bed and gulped down my oatmeal, a few swigs of coffee and bounded out the door into the elevator to the lobby. On the way down I picked up one runner who was quite chatty - obviously a morning person - ugh! She talked to me excitedly until I reached the fountain and announced this was my meeting place for my running buddy. She seemed disappointed to stop her conversation for five seconds until she started walking and talking to another lone runner headed to the bus. I waited barely a minute for Lisa and off we went wasting no time out the front door across the valet area and right into a line that went directly into a waiting bus and just like that we were in transport to EPCOT! The bus was dark with a low humming of conversations going on. We unloaded and into the cool pre-morning dampness and walked to a gathering area already crowded with waiting runners.
Off in the distance was a large screen that showed a group of "cheering leading aerobic" enthusiasts warming up to excitable music. UGH! This usually would have been irritating but my excitement for this big event had already begun to wake me up enough to disconnect from my lifetime hate for happy early morning people.
We stood talking and scoping the surroundings when we spied about five long rows of Porta Potties With responses like middle-aged Pavlov's dogs, we had the urge to use them and went and found a line. It took only a few seconds when the wind shifted and the aroma of these rows of Porta Potties just about took us out. But our strategy was take advantage of this convenience while it was yet available!
Then like a subconscious subliminal message had been sent through our microchips on the back of our number bib, a mass of people began to move toward and through the bag check-in area. This phenomenon continued for the next 30 minutes as tens of thousands of people walked...I mean shuffled, from the parking lot to the corrals located somewhere on a dark road. I had previously been informed about this mass movement which had been referred to as a "death march" to the corrals. I thought it was more like a call from aliens to earthlings to come to their space ship. Apparently someone way up front knew what was going on and we all were just blindly following the crowd...so dangerous and close to a social experiment as it can get! As a Leader it was out of my character to be in the back and not in charge but I went with it!
We were directed to our given corral and there we waited another 45 minutes while a big screen in our area "entertained" us with a joking MC with Donald Duck and Goofy. Soon a woman would sing the Star Spangled Banner and the first wave would be signaled with Donald's ducky voice saying "GO" and the sky lit with fireworks and pyrotechnic flashes! Total Disney! This is why I was in THIS race! Yay!!! My love for Disney was gonna propel me through this morning!!
Lisa and I were in corral "F". Not exactly a motivating connection..."F" for fail..."F" for FAR away - like waaaay in the back. The corrals went from A to H. So you get the picture. The race officially would start at 5:30 and but our wave wouldn't cross the start line until 6:05. I say it is "F" for frustrating. And there you have it. The feeling I had most the rest of race.
We crossed underneath the fire shooting start line and off we went into the dark down the main road. I would say there were 13,000 people in front of us and 9,000 people behind us! But I didn't notice at first because I was breathing in DISNEY! I could see displays on the side of the road up ahead and hear exciting Disney music playing. Yay for me I am running my first Half at Disney!
Then in the midst of that Disney magic I saw the first man peeing in the bushes. Wah, wah, wah! (Debbie downer music)... Seriously!???! Can you do that at Disney?? Desecrate Disney Property?...the happiest place on earth...the cleanest place on earth? Walt would roll over in his grave! Where was the allusion of perfection??? Then two more men down the ditch at the bushes...then a man too lazy to go all the way down the ditch to the bush line, he was peeing on the light pole! You can do that at the Boston Marathon but Disney has provided Porta Potties every mile, I could smell them up the road - couldn't they have just ran to them?? MEN!
After that initiation we honed in on breaking out of the crowd to run our trained pace. Lisa and I had been training for a good period of time before this race and we knew our time average and felt confident of a strong finish and a decent time. But we started getting frustrated from the very beginning with our pace. The crowds were thick and there were walkers everywhere. We had read that in a large race it is a challenge to get into your full run for the first mile. It takes that long for the crowd to thin out. But in this race the crowd NEVER thinned out. In fact I came to realize that with us starting so far back, other runners in the waves before us who slowed down were now bottle-necking together with waves from behind. The crowd remained this way for 13 miles. In addition to that, the roads that were just wide enough to run in a large throng of people became even more squashed as the road narrowed into a sidewalk or tunnel! This was the TRUE Goofy Challenge!!!
Then there was the frustration of the continuous need to pass slower runners with a lack of area to do so. The law of runner's etiquette is faster runners to the left and and walkers to the right. Passing is always done on the left. But this was not the reality of this race. For 13 miles walkers were everywhere - right, left and middle. Not only that but another etiquette is to only be in two's across. Larger groups have to give way for people to pass. Not in this race. Groups were 4 across a lot of the time.
The majority of our race was spent in logistical maneuvering. We hopped curbs to run on the grass until it seemed more dangerous with holes and dropped clothing items. We weaved in and out between people sometimes shifting our bodies sideways and tapping people with an "excuse me". We would split and I would go around one way and Lisa the other and then search for one another to join back together again. Had we known this would be the main part of our running I think we should have trained more like football players! Around mile 8 we realized we were probably NOT going to keep our training pace. That was hard for me to accept. We never broke into our training pace. AHHHH!
The highlight of the journey definitely was THE MAGIC KINGDOM! Dawn was just about to come upon as we passed through the Magic Kingdom Car Entrance. We ran past the Contemporary Resort, one of the only hotels we have never stayed at, and down under the tunnel and through a behind the scenes entrance. I almost didn't want to go behind the scenes and ruin my little girl fantasy but oh well! We entered main street from the side and I tried to get my little video camera out and taking video of our entrance and of course couldn't get it to work at that moment. I quickly put it away so I wouldn't miss anything myself. We made the all too familiar right turn to Tomorrow Land and ran past Space Mountain with flashes of years of lines and fast passes in my head. Now the crowd was thinning with people stopping for character pictures. But I wasn't thinking speed - I was taking this in!
We rounded to Fantasy Land and I got a good look at the new construction of a ride and there was the back of Cinderella's Castle! When we ran through it every one spontaneously as if we had practiced it, screamed. Then we came down the side and the instructions of another experienced racer who for-warned us to veer to the left and get a picture in front of the castle echoed in my head. Man this was going to cost us time! There was a line for these pictures! We did it anyway.
We took off through Liberty Square past Country Bear Jamboree and then out a side gate to behind the scenes where they store the parade floats! The crowd was thin as a long line formed to get a picture of a total NOT AT ALL LOOK-ALIKE Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.
I have to just add one more "they never told me this" to the race day experience. Runners are slobs.
There were drink stations every two miles. This was a nightmare scenario with such crowds because this caused a lot of slowing down and dodging people who were merging over to get water and merging back into a run. But imagine with me for a moment in the race behind 12,000 people who have grabbed a water cup and thrown it on the ground! A sea of squashed cups everywhere for over 100 feet every two miles!
Then the greatest slob nightmare was around mile 8 or 9. They were giving out "energizing gel".
This disgusting total sugar gel was grabbed by about 15,000 people and either consumed then thrown to the ground or one slurp taken and then with disgust thrown to the ground upon which thousands pounce the remaining gel out of the package. For almost a mile and a half running shoes were splatting and sticking to the pavement. WAY TO GO DISNEY!
I have no idea how DISNEY was able to clean up all that refuse before Park Opening! I am pretty sure they had to have Tinker Bell sprinkle fairy dust to get that job done!
Part 4 - THE FINISH AND AFTERMATH!
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