Congratulations to all who ran this race successfully. Thanks for all your pre-race input.
Hopefully this will help future participants know what to expect from the race. I know there were a few things that cropped up in my race experience that surprised me.
I've decided to divide this into pros and cons or rather cons and pros because going through it minute by minute would take rather a lot of space.
First the Cons:
1: It's expensive. I don't think there's any way around this but to say this race is pricy and I think it should be at least $30 less. I get that Disney makes it a premium because it's Disney, but that doesn't get it to 150 unless they start throwing in free (or at least significantly discounted) tickets to the park.
2: It's early. The start of this race was an hour and a half earlier than any race I've run. While it's nice to see
Disneyland lit up, I can do that on an evening visit to the park. Also, some of you have commented on the pictures being subpar. I don't think the shooters were experienced enough in dealing with shooting people in the dark with a flash. I was surprised at where most of them were set up. They should have had full flash outfits (think remotes with strobes etc) to handle the distances and varying distances from the photographer to the people they were shooting. Sunlight would certainly help these people shoot better pictures.
3: Corrals. Being that I'm a male, I was in Corral C. I totally understand this since it's a female oriented race. I support the idea. Unfortunately, I was never informed of this until I got to the venue. (If this was in some of the online info, please let me know where.) More surprising was that my teammate, who is female, was put in Corral E even though she is a sub 2 hour runner and said so in her registration. We got the ok from a Disney person to start together in C, but I still wonder why that happened. The whole purpose of the corrals is to allow people to run at their own pace without running over or being run over by other runners. Having a C runner in the E corral doesn't help anybody. Which gets me back to the males in Corral C. I really think it would be helpful to put the males in their own corral to help the poor females in Corral C. Here you have ladies who are planning on running a 2:45 race and they have to deal with men who are running up to twice as fast. I know it wasn't stress free from my perspective, running in the dark and trying to politely run through about 5000 people. Perhaps a B-minus or C-minus corral of just the men. At least the field would be more spread out by the time the faster men caught up with the next group of women.
4: I never did get any of the email updates for this race, despite trying two different emails (with different isps). This is really inexcusable. I have participated in gigantic races (i.e. la marathon) and tiny races and never had a race not be able to send me info. I emailed and called Disney to get this sorted and didn't get anywhere. I believe this is a trackshack issue.
Now the Pros (see, isn't this shorter than if I described the whole race?
)
1: The supporters on the race route were amazing. The fact that they were out there before dawn was incredible. Whoever the cheerleaders and bands were, I want to thank them for their incredible energy and volume. Also, the people with the signs. I can't remember many of them, but they had me laughing out loud more than once, which is hard when you are running.
2: Disney Characters. Always adds something to my day to have the Disney characters providing encouragement. I dressed as Peter Pan and got such a rush hearing "Go Peter. Go Peter." Great stuff.
3: I liked the course. It wasn't as "flat" as I was expecting, but it was still a really good course. I wish I could have seen more in the park that I could not see due to the sun not being out. I liked that you had a preview of the finish before the final curve. Nice to get that "I'm almost done" rush to set up your finish. Mickey and Minnie high fiving me at the finish, where else is that going to happen?
4: Massage. YAY. Thank god for the angel who massaged the cramps out of my calves. And it seemed like they had enough masseuses to handle the large numbers (you're perspective may be different depending on when you finished).
5: Medal. This is a close one. I was expecting a giant beautiful medal, and it is giant, but not as beautiful as I was expecting. Nicest medals I have are from the Surf City Marathon. Every one a work of art. This one is no slacker, but I was expecting more. (I know i'm inviting hate from this one. Just my honest opinion.
)
Thanks to all the ladies who participated and gave the race such a nice atmosphere. Loved all the faeries and princesses
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In fact, I think the only decent photo of me was as I crossed the finish and even that wasn't great since I crossed with a pack.
You're in good company there with ALOT of folks.
