Disney World Marathon (Race #2 of the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge)

Sunday's 3 am alarm was too early!!  After having no nap the day before and a very busy day, we were shot! We packed up, loaded the car and headed to meet our friends Paul and Karlis at the buses.  I tried to nap on the way to the staging area, but it didn't happen.  It wasn't nerves, it was noise.  I somehow managed to stop getting pre-race jitters.  I know I can complete the distance, and I don't worry about how fast.  We get to the staging area, weaving through people to find the area to exit to the corrals, again we didn't check bags and moved quickly to our corral.  I spot Endorphin Dude ahead of me and knowing he is a fellow Half Fanatic and a Marathon Maniac I yell out to him.  He and Dave (another HF/MM) are always confused for each other.  I told him I had read Dave had just been called Endorphin Dude at Ragnar and he got a good laugh and we cemented a friendship that has been awesome so far!  We got some pics with Tony (Endorphin Dude) doing Dave's classic pose and goofed off until it was time for our wave to start.

We found our friend Suezette and the 6 of us hung out while we approached the start line.  Tony ran into one of the tutu girls and Paul and Karlis started their intervals and we kept with Suezette until our intervals to walk started.  It was cold and we didn't lose the mylar right away.  We ran into our other friend Monica around Mile 2 and stayed with her 1/2 a mile.  We started going back and forth with Paul and Karlis around this point too.  We would see them and Tony quite a bit during the race.  We were doing easy intervals of 3/2s to make sure we didn't end up injured considering we have our final marathon in our quest to qualify for Marathon Maniacs 3 weeks post Goofy.  We stopped and had a blast taking pictures..here are a few.

Here we are with Paul and Karlis.

As you can see we really goofed off and just enjoyed the race!  Disney puts on a race to rival others.  I will say the marathon is MUCH better than the half marathon.  We didn't take any pictures with the princesses, but we are going back to run the Princess race!  We did stop at mile 23 to take a pic with our friend Dani who ran the half the day before.

We finished smiling...and airborn LOL

After the race we got our finisher pictures and waited on Tony, Paul, Karlis and Heidi to come in...while we waited, we saw Santa!!

We met back up with Tony (Endorphin Dude) next...we were there to witness his utmost joy at finishing the Goofy Challenge.

We truly enjoyed the Goofy challenge...yes we would do it again given the chance!!

Now...for the weekend bling!

DisneyWorld 1/2 Marathon (Race #1 of the Goofy Race and a Half Challenge)

Saturday morning came early, we didn't check into the hotel until later than planned as we had been meeting up with other runner friends almost immediately after arriving in Orlando.  The alarm at 3 am was not welcome!  We had to be up and at em and on the buses to the race staging area no later than 4 am.  We were texting and updating Facebook on the way to Epcot.  We had already formed our race strategies for running the half and full back to back.  We had no nerves about the half, only the full.  We knew without a doubt we could do both, it was more could we do them back to back.  The mile long trek from staging to the corrals was very slow going.  I felt like a cow being herded with the rest to slaughter.  We joked about this analogy and slowly padded along.  We get to our corral and noticed the jumbo-tron wasn't working, we were going to miss all the action up front.  Oh well!  We waited for our corral to move forward to start our wave.  The first 2 miles went fast, this was where we found Piglet and Pooh, we waited in line for 10 minutes!!! 

Shame on us, we got our pic and headed on!  The miles were mostly a blur, we saw a lot of characters and a lot of lines.  We decided no more pics until the marathon, but we did stop for a split second to drool over the Pirates of the Carribean guys...their Jack Sparrow looked like Johnny Depp!!  We made another couple of minute stop for Sueann to take a potty break around mile 8.  The rest of the miles flew by, we were concerned about time and honestly, we shouldn't have been!  We had 30 minutes until the cut off by the time we came in!  We really took it easy to make sure the marathon went smoothly and pain free!