Saturday: Slightly more race nerves than usual. Woke up about 5x during the night SURE that I had slept through my alarm, forgotten to turn it on, or had shut it off the first time it went off. Little bit of coffee, bowl of oatmeal, and took a half a water bottle with a full packet of tailwind to drink in the start corral. Drove the car to the HH at the resort for DH to retrieve later that morning. I looked around in what ended being the place for the meetup when I got to the start, but I must have been early or something, so I kept wandering through and got into my corral early to get off my feet and try to calm my nerves. At some point I saw The Expert walk past and I was SO HAPPY to see a person that I "knew" so I tracked her down in the crowd and we ended up running most of the race together. I said one of my goals was a dark-sky castle (aka still lit up) pic, but I wasn't sure if I could make it because of how far back we were in the start groups. She agreed to run with me and if we got to a point where one of us wanted to run a different pace from the other that we would just do our own thing. Somewhere around mile 3 or 4 we saw a Miss Piggy with a long blonde ponytail sticking out of the back of a hat and discovered that we had come up on SheHulk! So we ran with her as well until somewhere around Main Street. It cracks me up to look at the mile splits because after we got clear of the masses (mile 1) we ran around 13:00mm and then at mile 6 (where we split up for character/castle pics) it's over 25:00 for that mile.
WORTH IT! I caught back up to The Expert somewhere around Grand Floridian and we ran the rest of the course together. It seems that our paces matched up pretty well and we were both willing to be flexible in our intervals and just wanted to coast to the finish to save something for Sunday.
Real talk. After this race my feet were killing me. So so so sore. We headed to DS so I could finally do some shopping before the crowds started to peak. We had a lunch reservation for Chef Art Smith's that I was SO EXCITED FOR. But since I didn't eat my snack box IMMEDIATELY after the race, and waited until I got back to the room, I had almost no appetite. I
wanted to eat, but I just couldn't. Dinner was pretty much the same. I made myself eat.
My parents are "snow birds" who have a winter home a couple of hours from Orlando, and they drove over to see
us the toddler for the afternoon. We hung out at the pool, which helped my feet and legs tremendously, and then it was an attempt at an "early" bedtime (8:30) so I could feel like a person and not a zombie on Sunday.
Massive fail on that.
Sunday: I had intended to get to the meet-up but I was so tired that getting ready took me a lot longer than it should have, and I didn't get out the door until almost 3:00. Because we were changing resorts on this day (rented DVC points and limited availability basically tied our hands on this) the car was mostly loaded, and I didn't want to carry the stroller back up the stairs for DH/DD to use, so I decided to
limp walk to the front to catch the race bus. Which was 0.75mi. The sidewalks are well-lit, so I didn't feel nervous or unsafe about the (long) walk on my own, but it was yet another mile on my feet going into what I knew would be a long day. Add another layer of anxiety. Moving can help calm me down, so DURING the walk was better, but once I was on the bus it all started back up. I had intended to do the meet up on this morning, but I felt like I just needed to get into my corral, breathe, k-tape my foot, drink my tailwind concentrate, and try to get my brain straightened out for the day. I stopped at medical and got tylenol for my feet on my way to the corral, and stopped and checked a bag with a sandwich, compression socks, and clean (dry) leggings for post race, should I need them. I also packed my half medal with intentions of going back to that golden mickey statue for a pic with all of my medals at the end, but I didn't have the additional half mile+ in me by the time I finished. The Expert came and met me in the corral a bit before the start and we went back over the plan for the day: attempt 14min/mi -ish pace through the castle, and then just stay in front of the sweep line. We figured we would have around a 30min start on the balloon ladies, and would have "earned" another 20min by the time we got through MK, so a full hour of cushion to make the day as enjoyable as possible, with time to slow down and do any must-have character stops. And then they expedited the start because of the forecasted high temperatures and that initial 30min cushion became more like 15min. We were tracking the pacers from the 7:00 and the updates were VERY delayed coming in, which made us both nervous, but we knew that 12:30pm was around the cutoff for finishing.
We ran 90/30 intervals through the castle (some extra walk breaks for aid stations or when we took fuel) and stayed mostly in the 14-15mm pace through mile 11, and then we experimented a little with inverting that and doing 30/90, which we decided was too long of a walk and did 30/60 for most of the remainder of the race. The Expert lived up to her screen name with all of the tips and tricks for getting through the long, hot miles. DON'T THROW YOUR SPONGES AWAY! I had never seen that specific bit of advice. Keep them for the next water stations and re-wet them. The ice bags felt SO good. And her unwavering enthusiasm and positivity were exactly what I needed. We saw SheHulk on the course again in her Gazelle costume (SO CUTE!) on the way to MK. And we did it! We both finished, and I know that she kept me going through some of those long highway stretches, and hopefully I did the same for her.
At least I know that they should work for anything under 10mi without blisters.
90/30 intervals for M pace which was really weird compared to how I’ve been running my EA runs. Took me about a mile and a half to settle in and then things were fine. It was obviously more challenging than an easy run but nothing over the top.
