Dopey Adventure, Day 5

Today is when things start to get interesting. It's big mileage time.

My alarm goes off first so I hop out of bed, grab my race outfit bag and head into the bathroom to get dressed. By the time I'm done, Ashley and Paul are pretty much dressed too. We make some bagels as we finish gathering up our stuff and there'a knock on our adjoining room door. It's Dan telling us he can't run. He  is pulling out. We feel bad for him but tell him ok and he goes back to bed as we head down to the buses.

When we arrive at the race start I can already tell the security check for this race is going to take much longer than the previous 2 days. We wait. And wait. And wait. Finally we get through and make our way to a porta potty. By the time we're done there, it's time to head to our corrals, which for the longer 2 races are about a half mile walk away. By the time we get there, Ashley and I have to use the bathroom again. More porta potty lines. We miss the wheelchair race start.

Paul and I were both seeded into faster corrals than Ashley but we decided to start with her in J. The fireworks go off to start our corral and we take off. Sort of. It's so congested, we can barely manage more than a fast walk. Ashley was really concerned with turning her legs around for the next day so she was determined to stay within 13:30ish mile splits for the first half of the race. It was hard for Paul and I to maintain that pace, so we would often run ahead a little and then wait for her. That seemed to work out for about 6 miles. I told Ashley then that I didn't think I could keep doing that pace without getting hurt. She was ok with speeding up at that point and we took the time to take more character photos after we left Magic Kingdom about halfway through the race.

The weather conditions were pretty good. No rain this time. Running through the Magic Kingdom was going to be Ashley's first time ever in the park so I made sure to snap some photos as we got close to entering the park.

There it is!

Ashley is about to see Magic Kingdom for the first time.

The castle - too bad it's too foggy to see it.

We stopped for pics in front of the castle in Magic Kingdom, stopped by an indoor (yay - soap! yay - paper towels!) bathroom there as well and then exited the park. I had told Ashley and Paul that the one character I absolutely HAD to get a photo with was Mickey Mouse so if we saw him on the course, we were stopping. They agreed.

Now that we were over halfway done with the half marathon, we relaxed a bit and stopped for more pictures. We got Sebastian from the Little Mermaid, Goofy (Ashley and Paul were doing the Goofy Challenge - we had to do that for them!), the Green Army Men from Toy Story and Genie from Aladdin.

Hey - I was dressed as Ariel (sort of) so I had to get this pic.

You can't do the Goofy Challenge and not get a photo with the big guy. 

This dude was yelling at people that they were NOT gonna walk that hill!

Less than half mile from the finish and we stop for this pic.

We were getting ready to exit Epcot towards the finish and passed the gospel choir. I didn't realize they were there for the half. I looked forward to this for the full marathon - it often makes people cry. Hey - we're tired and delirious by that point in a marathon. Give us a break. After the choir, we turn the corner and can see the finish. We're almost there! I'm about 5 feet from the finish line when I hear Paul yell , "Mickey!" Leave it to a police officer to notice things I would have missed. I immediately turned my head, saw Mickey had no line, turned around and ran towards him. Ashley knew what to do. She was already getting her phone out ready to snap a photo. I love that you can see the finish line in the photo, knowing I refused to go over it until I got my Mickey pic.

Probably my favorite race photo from the week. Love that you can see the finish line right behind me.

Race #3 done

Race 3 was done. We grabbed a bus back to the resort and decided we'd soak our legs in the pool when we got back. So we changed into swimsuits and headed for the pool. I was feeling pretty good after my 22.4 miles of running but my feet were sore and my calves were tight. I thought the pool soak would do me some good. After our soak and showers, Paul and Ashley decided they needed a nap but I needed food more so I met up with Dan and Wendy and walked to a neighboring hotel for lunch in their restaurant. During lunch Wendy realized we had made an earlier dinner reservation than we remembered so it turned out we'd be eating again in 3 hours. We slowly made our way back to our resort, stopping to take photos along the way.

We took our time getting ready for dinner. We had a great early dinner but I wasn't too hungry. I got my traditional pre-race "beer" and some pasta. We shopped around Disney Springs for about an hour and I popped into a store called Basin, that sold bath products. I was told they sold a bath bomb that was good for tired muscles so I picked up a couple of those before we left.

Pre-race group dinner. If you could see under the table, you'd see my neon green compression socks and a pair of black Oofos Sandals. Keepin' it classy.

Once we got back to the resort, I pulled the cheesecake I'd bought at lunch out of the mini fridge and ate it while I sat in the bathtub and soaked my legs and feet with my newly-purchased bath bomb.

What? Just soaking my legs and eating cheesecake on a Mickey straw handle.

My nerves took over. For some reason I was really nervous. I didn't know why. I felt mostly pretty good and I had trained well. But I couldn't shake the anxiety. I was running a marathon the next day. I had done a half marathon that morning. What was I thinking? I got a reassuring message from my mentor and read it more than once to calm down. Then it was to bed. The big event was the next day.