Date: 1/12/2013
Time: 5:30 AM
Weather: 65 degrees at start, probably 70 at finish
Time:1:41:12
Overall: 509/23126
Division: 62/982 (25-29)
Forewarning, this post may contain Disney verbage, sorry, you'll have to deal with it, if you must know what I'm talking about, either ask me, or search the interwebs for "Disney + <insert verbage here>".
THE COURSE
Upon your entry into the Magic Kingdom, you are immediately bombarded with screams/cheering/clapping/noise from hundreds of family members and friends who have braved 4:00 AM wake up calls (for spectators) to see their runners. You quickly make a hard right onto Main Street U.S.A. and staring you straight in the face is probably the most amazing sight I've ever had while running a race (running into Lambeau is what I have to compare it to), Cinderella's Castle beautifully lit up, Main Street packed with people and all of the buildings lit up... Just wow... At the end of Main Street you turn right, run through Tomorrow Land and Fantasy Land before running through Cinderella's Castle. (Another wow...) A quick turn to the right to run through Frontier Land before exiting through a service entrance behind Splash Mountain.
You then follow Floridian Way south past the Grand Floridian and Polynesian resorts, and three of the five golf courses on Disney property (Palm, Magnolia, and Oak Trail). This eventually meets back up with World Drive, which you take until you meet back up with EPCOT Center Dr. Heading east from there you make your way into EPCOT through the bus depot and another service entrance.
The EPCOT portion of our journey was pretty short as you head straight south through Future World until you get to the World Showcase, turn straight back north, exit out a different service entrance, make a couple of quick corners before hitting the finish line.
WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
Organization and pizzaz. For the most part (see below), the organization of this race is unbelievable. When you think about the logistics needed to run a big city marathon (NY, DC, Chicago, etc.), especially when it is a two day production and you are trying to be as accommodating as possible to even the slowest of runners (16:00 min/mile minimum pace), all of this becomes mind blowing.
To start, you need to get 27,000 people to the starting line, when they are coming from hotels on property (and then likely don't have their own car, so they need to get to there via bus or monorail), hotels from off property (via taxi or rental car), or local residents (also via car). You need to store checked bags for those runners (though the NYC Marathon is trying to change this perception). You need port-a-potties for these runners to use before the race (I have never seen that many of them in one place before, I'm not sure where they were all hiding in Chicago, but my god, between the family reunion area and the starting line there are probably close to 1000 of them...). You also need an area that all of those runners can be organized in to start the race.
From there you would think it would get easier, but this is Disney, they aren't in the business of putting on a marathon just to put on a marathon. They've got four theme parks running 365 days of the year, with countless things going on inside each one of those. This leads to a 5:30 AM start for the race to try and cause as little impact on the normal operations of the park.
As far as the pizzaz factor, can you really beat Disney? NYC would need to include a loop around Yankee Stadium and going through Time Square to even come close. Chicago would need Wrigley, Soldier Field, and US Cellular, but still wouldn't be close.
WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
I've promised in posts before that I wouldn't complain about the weather because it is completely out of the control of the race organizers. The temp at the start was fine if you were going to a park, but for running 13.1 miles, combined with the humidity it was bad. Thankfully I was done before the worst of the heat/humidity.
The only thing that I didn't like about the race was about 1.6 miles in, when we went from EPCOT Center Drive to World Drive, we were on a single lane ramp. This was too narrow for the number of people trying to fit onto it. I've tried to think of ways to adjust the course to move this or avoid it, but there really isn't a good way around it...
OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS
Going into the half marathon portion of Goofy's Challenge, I was very concerned about foot, ankle, and knee issues that I had been having over the past few weeks (hell, past five months). Even on Thursday when flying down and going to pick up our packets I was struggling with walking at times (ankle pain and toe numbness).
My alarm went off at 2:30 Saturday morning. That was almost a blessing, as I hadn't been able to sleep much during what little of the night I had. Kendra, Vanessa, and I were ready by 3:15 and were able get on a bus right away over to the start. Once to EPCOT were were herded into a staging area before being released to walk to the corrals at 4:30. From that point I feel like it had to have been nearly a mile walk to my corral, which should go under things I didn't like about the race, but with the number of people it is hard to avoid.
Eventually, at about 5:30, we were off. Under fireworks and through haze, I along with ~3300 of my closest friend whose names I don't know started our 13.1 mile journey. To say that the first mile of this race is chaos is an understatement. People are bobbing and weaving almost immediately, doing anything to pass people and fall into a steady pace. I tried as much as I could to not fall into this, as I knew this race wasn't about time, but about surviving healthy and intact so that I could run a marathon less than a day later.
Eventually we fell into line, but not after running an 8:40 first mile. The next four miles I was smart, I ran the race I wanted to and stayed at ~8:00/mile pace. Somewhere in the Magic Kingdom, the smart thing completely left my brain. First it was a 7:50 mile, then 7:40... My legs and feet felt fine, so I kept pushing just a little bit faster.
Early on I decided that I would save the character pictures for during the marathon since the sporadic breaks would come in handy. Looking back I probably should have taken some of those breaks during the half as it likely would have slowed me down.
Anyways, the rest of the run wasn't overly eventful beyond speeding up each mile over the last seven. I finished in just over 1:41, which I was/am perfectly content with. After finishing I changed and headed out to the mile 12 mark to cheer on Vanessa and Kendra as they came through before running over to the finish to see them come through.
As a side note, I wore a Packers tech shirt for this race and got about a dozen Go Pack's during the run. Unfortunately this didn't help them Saturday night...
BLING
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| 2013 Walt Disney World Half Marathon medal |
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| Vanessa, myself, and Kendra after the half |
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