Date: 9/1/2013
Time: 5:30 AM
Weather: Not 100% sure, probably upper 60s at the start, mid-70s by the time I finished, extremely humid
Time: 1:32:21
Overall:82/15868
Division: 16/867 (25-29)
THE COURSE
Having never been to Disneyland before the weekend of this race, it was definitely interesting to compare and contrast the area that they had to work with for Disneyland and Walt Disney World outside of Orlando.
The course starts towards the western edge of Disney property, in the Disneyland Hotel/Downtown Disney area and immediately heads south, follows the street that forms the southern border of property before turning north and then into the backstage area of Disney's California Adventure (which is the park they opened in 2001 on what used to be Disneyland's parking lot). The most unique part of DCA was running through the new Cars Land, which was built to look like Radiator Springs from the movie Cars (obviously). Since the race started at 5:30 in the morning, it was still dark out as I ran through this part of the park, which made the scenery awesome, due to the neon lights mostly. It reminded me of car shows with my family when I was young, so there was a nice nostalgia feeling to it.
Moving out of DCA, we entered Disneyland, ran a small loop before coming through Sleeping Beauty's Castle. After Tomorrowland, Fantasyland, and Mickey's Toontown, we headed out into the streets of Anaheim. The next 3 1/2 miles or so were basically a non-event. Non-descript street, turn, non-descript street, turn... you get the picture. Once we got close to the Honda Center, it was nice to see some local old car clubs out similar to how they were out at the WDW Speedway for the marathon in January.
After running around the Honda Center (the old Duck Pond of Anaheim for those Mighty Ducks 2 fans out there), we followed a gravel trail along the Santa Ana River before running into Angels Stadium. (I have a love hate relationship with running through baseball stadiums, I'm up to three now, so I feel like I can officially give my opinion. I love the scenery, but absolutely hate running through non-domed stadiums. Miller Park, which has a retractable roof, has a dirt warning track, which is where you run for all of these races, any non-domed stadium has a gravel-like rocky warning track, which always gets kicked up into my shoes...).
The rest of the race is pretty non-descript, you head west from Angels Stadium, eventually getting back to the same backstage road behind DCA. Instead of heading into the park though, you run behind Downtown Disney, take a right-hand turn and head north to the welcoming finish line.
WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
The atmosphere at Disney races is always a little different than other races, and this was no different, at least at the start. (There is a completely different feel between running at DL and WDW, I guess it really depends on if you'd rather kill your miles running through forest/swamp, or through a city.)
WHAT WASN'T SO GREAT ABOUT THIS RACE
Getting to Anaheim. The I-5 sucks, at least in LA County. We'll just leave it at that.
I also realize they can't have Disney characters off property, but I would have loved to see some in the last mile, maybe some welcoming us back to Disneyland property...
RunDisney is finally correcting an issue that they've had with all of their non-female oriented races. They are finally having women's specific shirts (sizing, not themed). I only bring this up, as Vanessa put herself down for a small shirt during registration, and due to the sizes running large (in general), she and hundreds of other women wanted to exchange their small shirts for extra-smalls. Obviously, they ran out of extra-smalls and not everyone was happy... Sadly, they aren't correcting their issue until next January for the WDW Marathon...
And the weather... oh the humidity...
OVERALL RACE THOUGHTS
When trying to run a PR, some friendly advice, don't spend six hours on your feet in an amusement park when its 95 degrees and humid. It just doesn't work.
Beyond that, for the most part, the race went well. It was slightly disappointing not to PR, but when considering the weather and previous day, I should have known it wasn't going to be in the cards. Also, it was disappointing to take a couple of walk breaks. They probably amounted to only a minute or so of walking, but when you are aiming to run sub-7:00 miles, any walk breaks hurt that goal...
BLING
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| Disneyland Half Marathon medal |
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| Coast to Coast Challenge medal (half marathon or longer at both Disneyland and WDW) |
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