Better Late Than Never–My Walt Disney World Princess Half Marathon Race Recap

Better late than never, I always say…

So let’s go back a number of months…to late February. I left the chilly climes of Winnipeg to run the 2013 Princess Half Marathon in Disney World. Initially I had hoped to achieve a PR, but the combination of cross fit, an injury and having a horrible training session, didn’t make that happen. In fact, it was my slowest race time ever…but I finished–which actually speaks a ton to the enjoyment of this race.

Registrations topped out at 23,866–not sure how many people participated…but they were all of all shapes, sizes, abilities… and costumes. In fact, you were an anomaly if you were not in a costume. There were also 34 countries represented in the race. There were 22, 525 female participants and 1,341 male participants.

Getting to the race was a bit of an ordeal, given the road closures and lack luster shuttle option from my crappy hotel–by the way, any future participants of this race–stay on Disney property–the coming and going to the race is much simpler and worth the extra $$. I ended up being at the race almost 2 hours before I needed to be in my race corral–that is a long time to sit/stand and be chilly.

There is a lot of excitement, photos and music pre-race They have a dj playing pop songs and trying to pump people up to run 13.1 miles in the middle of the night (or at least that is what it felt like to me). At 5am local time, the ask people in the first corrals to go ahead and get into their spots. I’m not entirely sure where we were at this time, aside from an Epcot parking lot. When we got the call to get to our corrals, we had about a 20 minute walk to get there. It seemed like some sort of Disney back roads..but it was lit with crazy spotlights that I have seen at movie shoots in Winnipeg and had DJs.

I was in the first corral, after the wheel chair start. I can’t seem to find the paper, but I was told that there were something like 7-8 corrals and the last corral started an hour after me. I have one word for that–YIKES! I have so much respect for those late runners/walkers. It was fun being so close to the starting line..but there was a TON of people–it was hard not to get caught up and start too fast (which I totally did). As your waiting for the race to start, they bring up celebrities and inspiring participants to chat to the runners…they had one of the Biggest Loser winners, Ally and Sean Astin (from The Goonies and played Sam in Lord of the Rings). I briefly ran with Sean and I told him I thought he was the bomb. Was weird chatting with a celebrity while running a half…in Disney World, who was wearing a tiara.

Did I mention that it is weird running in the middle of the night? It totally is. It’s also weird running in the middle of the night and then seeing bright lights in the distance that are different Disney scenes and characters, etc…but boy is it encouraging. Despite being horribly under trained, ridiculously sleep deprived, and fighting both a knee injury and the beginnings of a nasty cold, these little scenes kept me going. They had a replica Pirates of the Caribbean ship with Davy Jones and Captain Jack out for you to take pictures, among the “bombs” going off (so authentic..it brought a big smile to my face). They had opportunities for you to take pictures with the princesses, the princes, the villains and other random characters from Lilo and Stich, A Bug’s Life, The Lion King, The Little Mermaid, etc. One of my favourite potential photo ops were two guys in tuxes, holding a glass slipper, standing next to a throne. You could have them post to “fit” you with the slipper, while you sit on the throne If I ever go back, and they have this opportunity, I am SO doing it.

The course is surprisingly hilly–but this is also from the perspective of someone who lives in some of the flattest land in North America. You are running up and down a lot of freeway ramps–so be prepared. On that note too, be prepared for the slant of these types or road ways–it can definitely aggravate knee or hip problems. Actually, a lot of this race is run through highway type roads in the Disney property and it feels like your run through the Magic Kingdom is incredibly fleeting….but…it is FANTASTIC.

It takes forever…or at least that is how it feels, to get to the Magic Kingdom when running this race. You run out of the Epcot parking lot for awhile…then you run past the race car track thing. Then you run through the Magic Kingdom signs that welcome you when you drive to MK…and in the distance, you can see the glow of MK, but you still have a long way to go, running back service roads to reach the park without the ferry or monorail. You end up coming into MK where the parades and characters tend to go in and out of…basically to the right of Main Street U.S.A. (if you are facing Cinderella’s Castle). There are lots of people cheering you on and it’s dark in MK so it’s filled with all the beautiful lights of MK…which is equally wonderful and annoying. It’s wonderful simply because its fun running it at night. It’s annoying because all of your photos are crazy dark.

So…you run through Main Street U.S.A. And make a bee-line to Tomorrowland. Tomorrowland goes by in a blur and from Tomorrowland, you run past the newly expanded portions of Fantasyland (can’t wait to see Rapunzel’s Tower when it is completed), and have the chance to get a picture with Gaston. You then make your way through the older part of Fantasyland and around the beautifully lit up carousel before running through the magical doors of Cinderella’s Castle. This is where you best be ready for your close up and there are lots of photographers Make sure to make eye contact with a few, wear a big smile and just roll with how awesome it is that you are running through the castle. Again, only bummer here, is if you are in the earlier waves of the race, your pics will be dark and it will be hard to tell that you are running through the castle.

Once the castle is over, you run through Frontierland and make your way out of the park. This is a little over 10K or the six-mile mark. I managed to make it to eight miles without stopping…but by then I was done. My poor training, injury, illness and lack of sleep was getting the better of me and I stopped…and truthfully, once the excitement of the MK is over, it’s hard to get excited to run highways again that are, for the most part, desolate aside from the odd character encounters which are welcome treats to see. Truth be told, if this would’ve been a regular road race, I think I would’ve quit. The fact that it is Disney and every mile had something fun, well, it made it much more worth finishing…plus I wasn’t leaving, no matter how awful I felt (and believe me, I felt awful), without my piece of bling.

You are running the back part of this out and back course around mile 9…well, let me rephrase, you feel that you are running the back part as you are seeing some of the fun attractions from when you were running out…they’ve just switched sides and/or there are some additional/new characters being represented. When I saw the Pirates of the Caribbean ship again, I was feeling pretty thrilled as it meant that the suffering would soon be done.

From mile 11-the finish, it is a bit mentally tough…or, at least it was to me as I didn’t really study the course, but I knew we did a loop around the Spaceship Earth in Epcot…but I didn’t realize that you actually go further than that…you head out past the globe-y thing and go out to the lagoon that marks the entrance to the World Showcase. Oh and before you even enter into Epcot, you can see the lights and road signs telling you how much further you have to go. There is also an incline that raises you up just before you hit those last few, winding miles into the park. Then you do the aforementioned loop and, eventually, you hit the finish line. Mickey Mouse happened to be there and give me a high-five as I finished. I took great satisfaction in this moment…though I wish there was a picture of me giving the high-five the THE Mickey Mouse. lol.

Upon finishing you get your uber fab medal, a sports drink, a bottle of water (I think I snagged two), a bag of ice (which was heaven), and a box of food, including hummus and crackers, a packet of nuts and seeds, some chocolate, some chips, a banana and some fruit snacks. You also get a chance for a photo shoot with your medal in front of a pink Princess Half backdrop, but sadly, I looked a bit too pink or the pink backdrop so I decided on the picture below instead.

I would definitely run the Princess race again if I am lucky enough to have the opportunity…but I would do a number of things different–like try to establish a sleep schedule that would make getting up for this race easier(I was up at 2:15am to do it…which is 1:15 Winnipeg time–a time I would normally go to bed), and I would definitely stay at a Disney Resort, as my hotel’s shuttle was an hour late and by the time it came I was sore, frozen, hungry, thirsty and cranky.

Much luv,

Leesah

Walt Disney World Princess Half Marathon 2013-Race Recap Part 1

Allo all you Princes and Princesses!

Yeah…I am still a little giddy about the fact that I finally got to run the Walt Disney World Half Marathon.  Despite not feeling my best due to injury, illness and lack of sleep, it was still one of the most fun races that I have ever ran!

Where to begin…well…I think I will start with pre-race things like the discounted Disney passes for racers, hotels, race expo, transportation, etc.  Part 2 will have info regarding the race itself.

Disney Passes:

To take advantage of the race discounts, you have to book them before you leave.  I did this last-minute on the day I left and it was a really great discount.  Must do this again in the future as we saved nearly $300 on our 3 day park hopper passes.  I missed the online deadline to order, but if you call RunDisney, they will still offer you the deal.

Hotels:

Since I am doing the coast to coast this year, I was really trying my best to save some $$ and stay off of the resort and in the strip of hotels near Downtown Disney on Hotel Plaza Boulevard.  I stayed at the Best Western Lake Buena Vista.  It was not worth the cost savings on another of levels.  The hotel is currently undergoing renos and is very dated with old fixtures–wand the age is really noticed in the bathrooms.

The first room was covered with wet towels, melted ice in the ice bucket and even had a half drunk beer.  We went down to complain and only had one other room as an option–and it had wet carpets because they just steam cleaned out some stains on the carpet.  They were then going to move us to a new room while we were out that day (they didn’t move us until we got back and we had to physically move our bags). Our compensation for this drama was eliminating the $10/day resort fee.

The house keeping was intermittent at best.  At one point, we went 2 days without sight of the cleaning staff.  When they came, they did an alright job, aside from the fact that they never replenished our drinking glasses.  We also made an effort to keep all of our recyclable items in a paper bag so what we could recycle all the cans, papers and water bottles, but they took it.

The positives of this hotel, however, are its proximity to Downtown Disney, (about an 8 minute walk), the amusement park shuttles (but even those weren’t the best but they are free, which is nice) and the fact that it was cheap.

Oh and one more negative their poor and costly attempt at a race shuttle.  They booked a van, last-minute, to drive the race participants.  For one way, it was $16/person….so it cost my dad and I $32 to get to the race.  Plus, the last driver of the van they booked, took out the back seat and didn’t return it to its rightful spot.  Thus my dad and one other race companion had to ride, crouched in the cargo hold in the back of the van. It also had an early call time–riders must be in the lobby by 3am, despite the fact that you didn’t have to be in your race corrals until 5:00am–leaving racers 2 hours to do essentially nothing but sit around and get stiff/tired/etc. I am unaware of what other hotels on Hotel Plaza Boulevard did for their guests who were running, but I would advise any runners participating in future races that opt to stay there to ask.

For post race, you had to use the regular theme park shuttles that the hotel offered as they would be running by that time–this was a huge pain as they were really late (I had to wait 50 minutes for the shuttle that normally cycles through every 25 minutes) and hard to get access to after the race as one had to cross the race course.  Getting to the spot for the shuttle was also difficult in terms of navigation–staff were completely uninformed of where these bus stops were, the finishing area in the Epcot parking lots was insanely busy and these bus stops were really far away from the finish–which isn’t the most fun when you are tired, and sore from running 13.1 miles.

Race Expo and Transportation:

Welcome to the Race Expo

This was a mixture of great and annoying.  Finding the bus stop on the “west side” of Downtown Disney was a bit of a pain–especially since many of the staff had no idea where to direct us.  Fortunately, one bus driver got on her radio to help me and several other runners find the right bus stop and actually drove us there.  Getting into the expo was orderly and finding my race bib wasn’t much of a problem–though I found it annoying that you didn’t get both your bib and your bag of goodies in the same general place.

I went right for opening of the expo on the Friday as I really wanted to get myself a t-shirt/jacket.  In retrospect, this was a bit of a mistake as it was INSANE at the expo.  People were going nuts in the store they set up with race swag and it was close quarters and made the general shopping experience pretty miserable and just plain old difficult to find stuff because everything was snapped up before you could even  contemplate whether the cheeky running for Prince Charming t-shirt was what you wanted.  When I run in California, I will take my chances on getting swag and simply just go later in the day.  Hopefully I will still be able to find my coast to coast t-shirt that I want to buy.

Return shuttle from the expo was an easy breezy process.  Absolutely no complaints there.

Transportation:

Now, as I had mentioned, transportation was hit and miss overall.  If you stayed on the Walt Disney Resort proper, you had easy access to shuttles to and from the race–and they were free.  It was shocking to see how many buses they had waiting for tired, sweaty runners post race–made me wish I had opted to pay a bit more and stay and a proper Disney resort. This is a MUST for any future Disney Races I plan on running in Orlando.

I’m not sure what they offered for the race shuttle, but I’m sure it was equally as convenient.  Unlike the aforementioned shuttle experience from my hotel.

There were cabs (wish I took one) waiting at Epcot to take people back to their hotels, but the race materials asked that you try to keep cars out of the area–and rightfully so with 22,000 runners and walkers participating in the race.  I can’t imagine the logistical nightmare that many cars would make….especially with all the road closures in and around the Magic Kingdom and Epcot for the race.

So that is essentially my pre-race recap for the Walt Disney World Princess Half 2013.  Stay tuned for part two, where I talk about the race and my overall Florida recap.

Much luv,

Leesah