No One Knows How Far I’ll Go - Comments Welcome

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Okay, back to my race recaps…

I wasn’t originally planning on doing Princess weekend. After Wine and Dine and Marathon Weekend, I figured that both my body and my wallet would need a break. I kept saying that the only thing that would convince me to do Princess is if they did a Sleeping Beauty race. Well, it’s almost like the Mouse was listening. I saw the themes, maybe uttered a curse word or two, sighed and started making plans. What’s one more race in a long training cycle?

I did, however, decide that I was going to “just” do the half marathon. This would be the first time - ever - that I was going to only do one race during a runDisney weekend. Even when I did my first half marathon, K and I also did the 5K. So, with that in mind, I decided that I wanted to set the goal of making it to the Magic Kingdom before the sun was completely up. I had never done that and, since this would be my first time running to the MK on fresh legs, I wanted to see what I could do. I didn’t necessarily want to set a time goal - I understand that Disney isn’t the place for those - so this was a good compromise.

It took a few days, but I bounced back pretty quickly from Dopey. I truly believe my statement that on the day after Dopey, Galloway runners can walk the parks, but Customized runners can actually get on and off rides without assistance. The hardest part for me was just being so darn tired and that just took time - and lots of rest - to get through. But I’ve done enough race weekends at this point that I knew what to expect.

I did wind up skipping a lot of my weekday runs between MW and Princess. I did my last two long Dopey simulations (ending in 23 & 26 miles) on the indoor track due to the weather and that burned me out on running around in that circle. I just couldn’t make myself get to the gym and running outside wasn’t an option. Thankfully, I knew that my Dopey endurance could get me through a half marathon. The one run that I made sure to get in was the 14 miler (also done on the indoor track - ugh!), which went fine. I might not have gotten any faster, but I was definitely going to cross the finish line.

Because I was “just” doing the half, our travel plans were different than usual. We decided to fly down on Friday evening and put our park time after the race. Partially, this was to avoid the President’s Day week crowds plus it was cheaper that way. This also allowed me to work almost a complete day on Friday to save my vacation time although it made the travel day a long one. Thankfully, our flight went as planned and we were able to get to our hotel with minimal drama.

Saturday morning, we got started early, wanting to get a little bit of park time before heading to the Expo. Which we did - eventually! Everything just seemed to be taking a little bit longer than we expected that morning. A friend had offered to pick up some merch for me on Thursday morning (I really, really wanted to make sure that I got the Sleeping Beauty merch) and we met up at the Expo. (Thanks again, Diana, you are the BEST!) I got my bib, did some shopping, and visited the Galloway booth.



Then J and I headed over to Disney Springs for the Rise & Run meet-up. We had a little bit of extra time so we decided to eat “dinner” early and wound up at D-Luxe Burger, which was slow, but very yummy. Definitely two thumbs up! As always, the meet up was a lot of fun and one of the highlights of the weekend.

 

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Race Recap - Princess Half-Marathon - Sunday, February 23, 2025

Usually for race weekends, I rent a car at the hotel and that was the original plan for this trip as well. Since it was only for one day (Saturday to Sunday), I waited until the last minute and apparently, there were no rental cars available in Orlando. Really? We wound up using Uber for everything, but the one thing that really worried me was getting a ride at o’dark thirty. I scheduled a pick-up in advance and gave myself a lot of extra time - and everything worked out perfectly. The driver arrived early and was wonderful.

I got an awesome corral placement in D so I was pretty confident that I could make my goal of getting to the Magic Kingdom by sunrise (around 7 a.m.), but I also had some numbers in the back of my head as to what I might be able to run.

My corral placement meant that I could also wait with a few of my Rise & Run friends, which was awesome. I was a little surprised by the quick start of the early corrals (there was very little time between the waves) and I started by 5:17 a.m.



The first mile and a half was terrible. It was really, really hard to get into any rhythm with my run/walk intervals. I finally decided to run when I could and walk when there was nowhere to go. Any time goal that I might have had in mind was out the window. I was back to my “get to the MK before sunrise” goal. I had more issues with the path by the Poly than I did during Marathon Weekend. It felt a lot more crowded and darker and I was more cautious than I would have liked.

It was just starting to get light as I passed the Grand Floridian and the sights were absolutely beautiful and everything that I wanted to experience.













I took all of the photos and did all of the things. After coming through the castle, I saw the line for photos (which was insane) and needed to make a decision about whether to stop. But I didn’t stop during either race for Marathon Weekend so I decided that this was my chance. I even tried a jump shot, which didn’t turn out great, but it wasn’t terrible either.



I felt reasonably good so I kept up a relatively good pace on the highway back to Epcot, but once I hit the “hill of death” (i.e. the cloverleaf), I slowed down quite a bit and took it easy to the finish.



Even with the course crowding and stopping for castle photos, I got my first “Disney legal” finish by almost 5 minutes and had a moving pace that was a 5 minute PR for the half marathon. I'll take it!

After finishing, I hung around the reunion area for a little bit. I actually got to meet up with a runner that I talked to a little bit on the course. As we were approaching the last turn, right before the overpass into Epcot, there was (I presume) a mother and daughter. The mother was struggling and was freaking out a little bit, seeing the climb up the overpass. Her daughter was trying to encourage her, but let’s just say, it wasn’t being well received. It was exactly what I went through with K at Disneyland (one day I need to do that race recap.) On my next walk break, I chatted with her a little bit, letting her know that this was the last hill and that she was really almost there. When I saw her afterwards, she was feeling a lot better about her life choices. She was still saying that she was never doing another half marathon, but we all know how that usually works out.

After leaving the reunion area, I stopped at one of the food trucks and got a grilled cheese sandwich and a cold can of Coke. I had seen the truck in the morning and immediately decided that that was going to be my post-race treat. The sandwich wasn’t quite as good as I had imagined, but the Coke really hit the spot. I headed over to the bleachers to sit down and cheer for the final finishers. This was another new thing for me to get to do and it was incredible. With everything going on in the world, this restored a little bit of my faith in the human spirit and reminded me that people can do amazing things when they are working towards an important goal.

 

[sandam1]

While getting a rideshare to the race was simple, my Disney transportation luck was terrible (as per usual) and getting one afterwards was a mess. Disney had set up an area in the middle of the parking lot for rideshare pick-ups, which seemed like a good idea in theory. However, in practice, it just created a huge back-up for every car trying to get out of the parking lot. Then, shortly after I requested my Uber, Disney closed the temporary rideshare pick-up area (right around the time Epcot was opening) and sent everyone on the LONG walk over to the regular pick-up area. It was just a mess. But I eventually got back to my hotel.

J was just headed to breakfast when I got there. After getting cleaned up, the early morning caught up with me and I desperately needed a nap so I told J to head to parks without me. That’s the worst part of running vacations - having to miss out on park time. But by the time J got back, I felt significantly better. It was a beautiful day out so we headed to the pool and floated along the lazy river for a while. Then I finally headed to the parks. It was Mardi Gras time! Universal’s Mardi Gras celebration is my second favorite event (I think Grinchmas is still my favorite) and I was so excited when I saw that it coincided with Princess weekend. We did a few quick rides, but primarily focused on visiting some food booths and then we grabbed a spot to watch the parade and catch some beads. It was soooo much fun!







Monday was cold and rainy. Sadly, it was also the day that we had booked to ride one of the Mardi Gras floats and throw beads. We did this a couple of years ago and, as much fun as it is to catch beads, riding in the parade is 1000 times that. Thankfully the rain stopped for the length of the parade, but the crowds were pretty light and there wasn’t quite as much energy as usual. We had a great bead captain who made sure that we still had fun. Plus she had a lot of great stories about the history of Universal’s Mardi Gras parades.



Afterwards, we decided to try to get standby spots for the following day, which wound up being a little bit of a saga. I knew that J and I needed to get our passes linked so that we could get two spots. Unfortunately, Universal doesn’t have a “friends and family” function like Disney and we had to stop at guest services on our way into the park to have them take care of it. It looked like we were all set and J and I headed off to catch the next Animal Actors show. We had just sat down and I opened the app, hit refresh like twice, and the queue came open. Universal randomly drops float spots so it was just dumb luck. But when I tried to reserve spots, I could get one for me, but I was getting an error that J wasn’t eligible because she hadn’t scanned into the park. Ugh! I immediately grabbed my things, took J’s pass, and hightailed it back to guest services.

The good news was that, after doing some behind the scenes maneuvering (apparently Universal’s IT can be just as glitchy as Disney’s at times), guest services was finally able to force the system to recognize that J was in the park. The bad news was that, by the time that happened, all of the float spots were gone and they didn’t have the ability to help us out and find a spot. We were told to keep refreshing and hope that something became available.

So we sat near the float rider gathering spot and refreshed - and refreshed - and refreshed, over and over again, as it got later and later. I had just turned to J and said “I don’t think that this is going to happen,” when I hit refresh one more time and it opened. Thankfully, this time J’s ticket worked like it should and I got her a spot. Whew! J and I could both breathe again.

All of the stress was 100% worth it! It was more fun than the night before with bigger crowds and more energy. Ironically, we wound up on the same float as the night before although we did have a different float captain.





By the time we were done, the park was closed, but it was worth it.

And then on Wednesday, it was time to (sadly) go home. We had an evening flight so we decided to sleep in a little, stay at the hotel until check-out, and then head to the parks which worked well. It didn’t feel like we had a lot of park time on this trip, but we were able to do most of our favorites at least once. Our flight home went well and with that, another successful runDisney trip came to an end.