2012 Disney Half Marathon Race Report

Pre-Race Rambles:

What I didn’t tell you about in my Disney Family 5K report was that I was starting to feel a bit under the weather.  My voice was getting a bit hoarse and my chest was feeling heavy during the 5K.  I went to bed the night before the half marathon nice and early in anticipation of a 3 am wake up.  I wound up spending half the short night hacking up a lung.  This race was going to be fun.

We drove to the race start at EPCOT and snapped a few photos before making the long trek to the start line.

I didn’t check a gear bag and I went straight to the porta-potty line ups.  After making my way through the line ups a couple of times I made the long slow walk to the start line.  I finally made it to corral B with only a few minutes to spare before the race would start.

Disney Half Marathon Race Report:

Donald, Goofy and Mickey counted us down and cheered us on at the start.

Since I was feeling so craptastic I wanted to run 4 minutes, walk 1 minute and get as many photos with characters as possible.

I think this is Scrooge McDuck??  Anyone know for sure?

Darkwing Duck!

I hit the 5K mark at 40 minutes.  The humidity was rough on the heavy chest but the 4:1s were doing the trick of keeping my stamina up.  Luckily it was fairly cool out.

All of a sudden we ran in to the Magic Kingdom and I saw my husband and dad waiting for me.  I passed off my long sleeve top and kept going.  Running down Main Street towards the castle is the best experience of the whole race!

Buzz Lightyear…

Alice and the Evil Queen…

Donald and Daisy…

From the Princess and the Frog…

Running past the Country Bear Jamboree…

Chief Engineer on the steam train…

I got a ton of pictures in the park but the lines for them were pretty long.  I probably spent a good 30 minutes in lines?  We were now out of the park and running the boring road that takes you past the Grand Floridian and Polynesian resorts.  This is normally a tough part of the race.  There is a mental low after all of the excitement of running through Magic Kingdom.  The sun is coming up and there is no shade on the road.  Luckily on this day there were clouds in the sky and it remained cool.  Perfect running weather.

Disney keeps this interesting with tons of characters out on this road.  Mary Poppins…

Minnie Mouse…

Back on the highway I decided I was ready for a break when I saw Scrooge McDuck again so I stopped for a second picture.

Green soldier from Toy Story!

People on stilts!

The overpasses and the humidity was really taking its toll on the heaviness in my chest so I was walking a bit more frequently.  Finally…we hit EPCOT.

The last 1.1 miles was a slow slog.  I stopped for a picture with Duffy and then continued on to the finish line.

3:17:20 and I was done.  Not bad given all of the character photos I stopped for and how crappy I was feeling!

Later in the afternoon I stopped by the French pavilion in EPCOT for a glass of champagne to celebrate!

Results:

3:17:20
Overall: 19,390 of 22,400
F30 – 34: 1,596 of 1,877