After the half marathon, we showered, grabbed some lunch, and hit Hollywood Studios for a few rides. Since it’s not a huge park we knew we wouldn’t do too much damage. Besides, all through training we were active after our “short” runs on our double-run weekends!

We wanted Italian for dinner that night to carb-load for the marathon, but I waited a bit to long to make reservations. The latest reservation I could get was at 3:20pm! But actually, it worked out perfectly. Since we had been up so long, it felt like 7p.m. when we sat down to dinner. We ate, finished up at the park, and headed back to our room early. We got our clothes laid out and called it a night … around 7:30p.m!

Sunday, January 10: Mickey Mouse Full Marathon

Just like the day before, my alarm went off at 2:45 a.m. As I eased myself awake, I slowly realized I was getting ready to run 26.2 miles. Did I feel like running 26.2 miles? Well, we were going to find out!

The skies were clear for the second day — no rain/snow, so that was good news. But at my early wake-up time, it was only 27 degrees. Anything below freezing and I’m really bundled up! I had some choices … but I chose all of my warmest options.

Thin tights under my blue ToughGirl Skirt — a skirt with attached pants. Double layers! On top I wore a thin long-sleeve tech shirt under a quarter zip fleece top.  I topped that with another custom-made short sleeve tech shirt and a throw-away windbreaker. I figured I’d lose that after warming up.

After two pairs of gloves (one tech, one dollar-store that I planned to toss), and a fleece balaclava, I was ready to go!

We were glad we saved our mylar blankets — they were more effective than the garbage bag from the previous day.

The drill was the same — wander around the staging area for a while, visit the port-o-pots, and begin the journey to the start line. I decided to clock the distance on my Garmin this time — .83 to our corral!

It was a totally different experience from the half marathon, though. Even though we were just as generous with our time (6 hours), and in the same corral (G), there were actually a couple more corrals behind us this time. And the first three corrals took a different route for the first few miles, so they were on the other side of the street.

We moved to the front of the corral (on the street! not in the grass!), and danced to the music (that we could hear!), mainly to keep warm. Hooray for working speakers, and lights! I was getting excited to run!

And before we knew it, we were on our way — Garmin says we started at 5:54a.m. And we started running. All those walkers from the previous day were behind us. Yay!

Of course, it made it more necessary for us to move to the right whenever we were getting ready for a walk. But we weren’t alone, there were tons of Galloway runners in our corral. And for much of the course, we were on wide highways so we didn’t have to worry about it that much, everybody had plenty of room.

Our first entrance to Epcot was amazing. They were playing music and the fires were burning in those giant torch things they have along the lake. I was warmed up by now and I lost the windbreaker and extra gloves. It was a quick trip through the park and we were back on the roads. To the Magic Kingdom!

That takes a while — it’s about five miles between the parks. Around mile eight, I was starting to fade. Uh-oh, we had a LONG way to go. Fortunately, that problem was solved by taking a GU. (Tri Berry, my favorite!)

The Magic Kingdom route was the same as the half course. But we had sunny skies. And we learned we could use the real bathrooms while in the park — not too long of a line, either. (We timed it right, it was worse when we got out!)

And I had my camera! I didn’t take too many shots, but was glad to have it.

After the Magic Kingdom, we were back on the road — another long, boring stretch of highway.  Looking at the race course, it seems to be another five-mile stretch. But it seemed like we were almost at Animal Kingdom forever!

And then we ran through so quickly. And the monkeys weren’t even out!

It was around mile 17 when we decided to take a stretch break. We were starting to feel the effects of all that running. It was helpful, and we started taking them every three or so miles.

After leaving the Animal Kingdom there was more highway! Including an annoying out-and-back at mile 20! My training partner was starting to feel a little off, so we took more walk breaks. I didn’t mind, I vowed to stick with her! Though, my feet were really hurting. Oddly enough, it hurt less to run at this point!

Eventually we did enter Hollywood Studios, where they were handing out chocolate. Yum! We took another stretch break. I ate my chocolate, and she had some Luna Moons, which seemed to help. We kept going with our run/walk intervals.

After Hollywood Studios,  there was no more highway! We hit mile 24 wile running along the (cold! breezy!) waterfront by the Disney Boardwalk and Yacht and Beach Club Resorts.

After passing the resorts, we were back in Epcot, running through the World Showcase. I love Epcot, so that was great, and we were almost finished! Just around the lake and we were there!

Chip time: 5:48:22. A bit slower than our training runs, and a lot slower than my only other full marathon, but I’ll take it!

Our final few weeks of training were a bit rough, as we had a lot of cold, windy, rainy and snowy conditions to deal with. Little did we know we were actually preparing ourselves for race day!

Saturday, January 9: Donald Duck Half Marathon

My alarm went off at 2:45 a.m. I consulted my phone for the weather (it was cold, in the 30s, but above freezing), and made a final decision on my layers. I packed a lot of options for myself, and I was glad to have choices! With predicted rainy conditions and chilly temperatures, I knew I wouldn’t be shedding layers, but I didn’t want to wear too much, either. I tend to overdress in the cold. I went with a long-sleeve tech shirt and waterproof jacket. Since it wasn’t that cold, I decided I didn’t need to wear the thin tights under my running pants.

I also wore a short-sleeve tech shirt over the long-sleeve shirt with a Disney decal on the back. My friends made up custom shirts for all of our group (16 runners, 14 doing Goofy!). I wanted to wear it, even though I knew wouldn’t be seen. Plus it was an extra core layer!

We boarded the bus just before 4 a.m. and were on our way to the staging area. There was a lot of traffic, and we were grateful. The more time on the bus, the better! I think it was around 4:30 when we got there.

I donned a garbage bag in a feeble attempt to block the wind, but was still chilly as we waited in the staging area, visited the port-o-pots, and began our journey to the start line.

Having done a Disney race before, I knew to expect a long walk to the starting corrals. Along the way, it started raining. And SNOWING. Which is nothing new to us, fortunately, but there were a lot of unprepared runners out there.

Because I was doing both races, I seeded myself in the back with a slow predicted time. I put down three hours for the half, even though my average time is 2:15. I usually run half marathons straight, not the run-walk we were doing for both Goofy races. But I don’t usually run a full marathon the next day!

It sure was dark back there in the last corral. We were standing in the grass, and the speaker near us wasn’t working. No music, and we couldn’t hear the announcers. It seemed like forever as we waited for each of the waves to go off. According to my Garmin, we were finally on our way at 6:18 a.m.

Yes, I wanted to keep it slow, and I expected it to take about 2:45 for the half based on our training runs … but it turns out that last corral is full of walkers! Right from the start we had a hard time navigating, and it didn’t get any better for the entire 13.1 miles. It wasn’t a problem when we were on a walk, but often we went off-road and ran in the grass to get around the crowd!

At the end, there was a bit of a line getting to the food, and an even longer line to get to the resort buses. Though once we actually found the correct line, it wasn’t quite as bad. But by then we were cooling down. Brrr! It was a little breezy, tough to keep our mylar blankets in place!

We still had a great time. How can you not have fun running through the Magic Kingdom? My friend/training partner and I were both feeling good and stuck together the whole time. We managed to actually get a little more room to run for the last five miles and sped up a little bit. It felt great!

I ended up finishing in 2:48:53. Not too far off our training runs, and it included a five-minute potty break!

This morning I completed my last long run before my marathon and a half. Hooray!

I’ll come back to that … it seems I’ve been slacking on my run updates again. Looks like the last report I gave was a month ago so I’ll just pick up where I left off.

Week 11
Tuesday: 6
Thursday: 5
Saturday: 10
Sunday: 12
Total: 33 miles

Our plan originally had us scheduled for 20 on that Sunday, but we decided two long-run weeks in a row was a bad idea so we dropped our mileage. We actually had a 10K that day. After finishing, we basically ran the course again!

Week 12
Tuesday: 4.25
Thursday: 7 (Thanksgiving Day 10K — plus a little extra running to/from my car)
Saturday: 5
Sunday: 12.5
Total: 28.75 miles

Week 13
Tuesday: 5
Saturday: 10
Sunday: 20
Total: 35 miles

Week 13 was a bit challenging! On Saturday we started running in the rain, which turned to snow a few miles in. It was colder than we expected so we were a little underdressed, and it was pretty miserable being wet in the snow! But the miles went by quickly somehow.

Sunday that week was sunny, but we had some weather-related issues from the day before. We had some obstacles on the trail — aside from the snow and ice, we had to crawl under the bamboo that had drooped from the weight of the snow. It was only a couple inches, but it was a wet snow! See photos over here. The first half went by very slowly, but by the time we turned around, most of the ice had melted and the bamboo popped back up.

Week 14
Wednesday: 4.25
Saturday: 6
Sunday: 12
Total: 22.25

It was tough fitting in weekday mileage Week 14. I sing in a community chorus, and we were rehearsing or performing every night. I ended up hitting the treadmill at 10:45 p.m. after rehearsal Wednesday night. I couldn’t let it go until the weekend!

On that Sunday, we added mileage before a 15K race (9.3 miles) on another cold and rainy day. I ran it straight out despite having been doing Galloway run/walk for all of my long runs during this marathon training. I was pleasantly surprised to average 9:35/mile, beating last year’s time by nearly five minutes!

Week 15
Tuesday: 3
Friday: 11
Saturday (today): 20.1
Total: 34.1 miles

We had to get creative this week. We had a quick caroling gig at a holiday party on Tuesday night. The party was close to my running partner’s house, so we ran from there when we were done singing. Legs were a little tired from Sunday — it was not only faster than I’m used to. It was hilly!

We had to adjust our weekend runs this week as well. With a matinee Messiah performance scheduled Sunday afternoon, there was no way we were going to get our planned 22 miles in. I worked from home Friday and we knocked out our 11 miles early in the morning.  I was only a little late logging into my laptop. For today, we had a 5-mile race in Baltimore, and were going to hit the NCR Trail for 17 miles.

But our plans changed.

While the race wasn’t canceled, it was my first DNS (Did Not Start). Because I woke up to this:

It was still coming down hard, and our winter storm warning had been upgraded to a blizzard warning, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. There was no way I was getting caught in that!

So I puttered around the house for a while until I finally was ready to start moving. And attempt a very, very long day on the treadmill.

Usually I get bored with the treadmill kind of quickly. My longest treadmill run previously was only 6 miles. But I really wanted to get my last long run done!

I propped my laptop on top of the treadmill so I could catch up on some TV shows, set up an interval timer, and started my run. I did run/walk intervals just like I’ve been doing for all of my long runs. It wasn’t all that annoying to keep changing the speed — it felt good to change up the pace.

I took breaks after each episode — stretching, checking Facebook, Twitter and email, and taking photos. It was kind of nice to wander around the house for a few minutes. I was definitely glad I wasn’t outside!

I watched four episodes of Melrose Place, one 90210, and one Desperate Housewives. That sounds like a lot, but hour-long shows are only about 40 minutes each when you watch commercial-free versions online. When that DH episode ended at 20.1 miles, I decided that was enough!

We only wanted the 22 for a confidence-builder. If I can survive 20 on the treadmill, I’m more than ready for this race!