Episode IV: The Star Wars 10K
Saturday, April 22nd
With so much adrenaline, I could not fall asleep. It was like the anticipation of Christmas morning. 4.5 months of training came down to the next two days. I didn't fall asleep until like 12:30am. I ended up waking up at 2:45am. I did my usual routine of taking a nice hot shower. I put on my layers of clothes, which doesn't make sense with the potential heat advisory, right? My clothes consisted of: compression shorts, compression calf sleeves for both legs, compression ankle sleeve for my right foot, compression stormtrooper under shirt (because why not?), stormtrooper socks, Empire Strikes Back shirt, Nike grey shorts, and Nike running shoes (my 1st string shoes). I had three snacks set: 3:15am snack - 1/2 Complete Cookie; 4:15am snack - Natural Valley Honey & Oats bar; 5:15am snack - Chocolate Chip Cliff Bar.
Within our group of runners, only 2/7 of us were doing the Dark Side Challenge. One of us was staying at the Boardwalk Villas and the other at Caribbean Beach. We didn't have any plans to meet up before the run because we had a feeling it would be chaotic. I ended up getting on the bus at about 3:40am and arrived to the Ticket and Transportation Center at 4:00am. Somehow, when I got off the bus, I ran right into my friend. Out of the like 10,000 people there, the chances of that happening had to be slim. Anyway, he was in corral A and I was in corral E for the 10K. With my current pace, I should be in corral A, but my proof of time at submission was not as good, so I was in corral E. At the beginning, we did some stretching and weren't really concerned with getting pictures with the characters.
I am not sure what advice to give on getting pictures with these characters. The characters were at both the start and finish entertainment areas. They were the same characters and were not meeting throughout the run. If I remember right, the characters were: Boba Fett, Kylo Ren, Darth Vader, and Captain Phasma. They had picture displays from Rogue One and Jabba The Hutt. My advice if you are a fast runner like corral A or B. Save these characters for the finish because you will get there before the other runners thus a shorter line. Probably go from the rarest or your favorite to the more common characters. Other runners, I would suggest maybe splitting up the characters between the start and finish. I did not stop for any characters on either run along the race. If I remember right, the characters along the race were: Ewok, Chewbacca, R2D2, Darth Maul, stormtroopers, Ezra, Sabine, and some other displays.
I think I got into my corral at like 4:30am and was in the upper middle. I am guessing there were multiple waves for corral E. But I was at least in the first wave for corral E. The pre-entertainment was cool. They showed various clips and trailers of the Star Wars movies. The DJ had a lot of energy for 4:30am - 5:00am. The hosts were actually the same people that do the pre-NFL Sunday entertainment at the ESPN Club at the Boardwalk, which I personally thought was funny since I am used to them talking about the NFL and not Star Wars. On a side note, the best costume I saw was some dude dressed up as George Lucas and he was a runner. It got a chuckle out of me.
Ready, set, go! With being in corral E, I didn't start the race until 5:55am, so 25 minutes after the first corral. Matter of fact, my friend that was in corral A was more then half way done with the race by the time I started. My personal goal was to take an easy for the 10K, almost make this a warm up for the Half Marathon, the next day. My goal was to be between 55:00 - 59:00 finish, which is like a 8:52 to 9:30 pace.
Mile 1-3: Even with weaving around so many runners, the amount of adrenaline in my body led me to like a 7:25 first mile. That is not a pace that I wanted to maintain for saving my body for the next day. The first 3 miles was pretty much all on World Drive. One would think that would be quite boring but there were quite a bit of entertainment along the way. First, it was cool running through the Magic Kingdom parking gate, it just felt magical. Second, they spaced out characters, picture displays, and giant TVs with Star Wars clips along the way.
Mile 4: As Anakin Skywalker would say "This is where the fun begins!" Yea, I actually said that out loud while running. Mile 4 was through most of the Hollywood Studios backstage area and Hollywood Studios. I believe some of the 501st legion were in the Fantasmic area. On a side note, in comparison to
Disneyland, the half there did have a ton more 501st legion and that is because it is located in California.
Mile 5: This ran along Crescent Lake aka the Epcot Resort area on the side of the Boardwalk. I would say the side of the Boardwalk was one of the major bottlenecks.
(To Be Continued)
