2013 Wine & Dine Half Marathon! Arriving
Up to this point I'd run 2 half marathons and 2 marathons at Disney...all started in the morning from the same Epcot parking lot. Wine and Dine was totally different.
The starting area for Wine and Dine is at Wide World of Sports. It's nice because all that separates the staging area (where there are porta-potties, gear check, a DJ, character meets, etc.) from the starting corrals is a row of trees. During the morning races there's a 15-20 minute walk from the staging area to the starting corrals. Here it was as easy as walking around the corner.
For Disney races I've become used to the routine of waking up at some ungodly hour of the "morning" (i.e. 2:45AM to make it to the corrals by 4:30AM
), rolling out of bed and stumbling onto the bus in complete darkness. This time it was still pitch black out, but it was 7:45ish PM. It was surreal.
The bus let us off pretty close to the staging area and I went to check my gear bag. Runners get the clear bag at t-shirt pick-up during the expo...there's a sticker with the bib number printed on that attaches to the bag. The bags are dropped off at the staging area and arranged by the first letter of the runner's last name, then by bib number. All of those bags are then transported to the finish area at Epcot on rented trucks, and before that (new for this year in the wake of what happened in Boston in the spring) they are inspected by police and police dogs. Quite a process, and one that I know was a huge mess during the first Wine & Dine half a few years back.
After dropping off my gear I had 2 hours to kill until the race started. There were 4 character lines, one each for Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Chip & Dale. Since I had nothing better to do I hopped into the Mickey line, the biggest line I've ever waited in, for anything at Disney. It didn't bother me at the time because the corrals were only, like, 100 feet away and I didn't have anything to do or anyone to talk to (in general I'm not very good and striking up conversations with strangers unless I'm in a super-great mood), but looking back that line was completely insane and I wish I'd waited for a different character, as the other lines were far shorter.
I never got a good picture of the full Mickey line, but here's, like, an eighth of it:
It wound around 4 TIMES. ALL of those people were in the line.
During my time in the line I was approached by 5-6 official race photographers who wanted to take a picture of me just standing there. I humored the first 3...for the 4th and 5th I pretended to be talking on my phone when I saw them approaching, and for the 6th I just flat-out told them "no thanks." It was really getting on my nerves.
Speaking of getting on my nerves...all day I'd been slightly concerned about how my cell phone battery would hold up this evening, because I wanted to still have some juice left to be able to contact Will once the race was over. It made me nervous because with 2 hours to kill I knew I'd spend most of that time messing around on my phone. This turned out not to be an issue, because cell phone reception was terrible in the staging area. I couldn't use the internet at all (meaning NO INSTAGRAM!
) and text messaging was very sporadic with my having to turn the phone off and on to successfully send any messages. Eventually I just gave up on it, so hey, no worries about the battery!
So anyway, Mickey picture...after an hour and twenty minutes of waiting in line (seriously, I kept track) I was about 10 people away from my Mickey picture...and HE LEFT.
And didn't come back! ARRG!
Somehow I wasn't even that mad about this, just a little annoyed. I guess because I really had nothing better to do beyond stand in line, eat my bagel and watch the DJ work the crowd (seriously, that guy was awesome. Totally cheesy but he danced his butt off and kept the energy up for 2 hours. Kudos, sir). If this had happened in a park I would have been livid...of course, I wouldn't have ever waited 1:20 for a character picture unless it was someone SUPER RARE...but still.
Let's see, what else from staging...oh! I saw 2 runners get engaged, so that was fun.
My Mickey dreams were dashed at about 9:20, so I decided this was probably a good time to visit the bathrooms and head over to the corrals. Later on I heard horror stories of people waiting 45 minutes for a porta-potty, but by the time I got to them most people were already in the corrals (we were supposed to be in them by 9:15...oops
). So by the time I got to the porta-potties I only had a 10-minute wait and was in my corral by 9:30.
This was my first runDisney race with the new corralling system. Now there were more corrals (12 of them lettered A-L, plus the elite corral compared to, I think, 6 for last year), they were smaller, and they started 2-3 minutes apart, all in an effort to reduce course crowding.
I have to say, I am a HUGE fan of the corral changes. Running the half marathon in January 2013 (which is a much bigger race than Wine & Dine) was SO frustrating - it was a packed course and we came to a complete stop more than once because it was so crowded and there was poor runner etiquette throughout. This race felt different right away - yes it was a much smaller groups of runners (14,000 here vs. 20,000 in January) but I felt like the corral was so much less crowded with 1,000 of us there compared to what I remembered from January when the corral was easily twice as full.
The view from Corral E!
By now my phone WAS working again! Apparently the reception was much better on this side of the trees.
Instagram video! In an mmmbop they're gone, in an mmmbop they're not thererrrrreeee yeah yeah, until you lose your hair!
http://youtu.be/x8hUYQ6sc28
I texted a bit with Will and got a few funny messages from a few other Disney pals. They were GREATLY needed because I was becoming increasingly nervous about completing the race now that it was almost time to go.
A Disney vocalist sang the National Anthem and the wheelchair corral was took off at 9:58PM...ahhh it's almost go time!!!
Each corral was sent off with fireworks. One of my favorite things about Disney races!
SEEETTTTT GOOOOOO!
http://youtu.be/ahwrd0NRpeg
Continued in Next Post
I'm tentatively planning on Tower of Terror this year too. Fingers crossed!
2013 was sort of a weird year with running - ever since I came home from the marathon trip in January I'd had trouble finding motivation to really stick with it, and as a result almost every race I did last year had been pretty miserable. But for these first two miles I felt amazing, and it made me realize that I can't give up running altogether. It's a very fond memory I have from the race.
Any hopes I had of a completely pain-free race after those successful first 2 miles were gone.
Oh, to be fast!
Definitely give a Disney race a try, they are so fun!
I have bad memories associated with these guys but I was looking for any excuse to briefly stop by now. Tigger was the only one I got a photo with but I remember seeing Sebastian, Lumiere and Genie puppets out on the course, too.
HAHAHA!
)
The Wine & Dine conditions felt amazing compared to my normal treadmill scenario.
