One Month Ago I Ran My First Half

So I’ve been a bad blogger. I haven’t updated about the Tinker Bell half marathon yet and it was exactly a month and a day ago! Whoops. I’ve been meaning to sit down and write about it but then keep thinking that I don’t have enough time or patience to make the post as wonderful as I want it to be. Finally, I decided to just say “screw it” and write up a post before I forget what even happened!

So, first things first: my first time in LA. 

I’ve been out to San Francisco twice, but that part of California is vastly different than LA I came to learn. It was cool to fly over the Grand Canyon and the Rockies and see giant crop fields, but flying over LA itself was kind of shocking – it’s so big! Being a naïve New Englander, when I think of cities I think of Boston, and when I think of neighboring cities (like LA to Anaheim), I expected it to be a 20 minute drive tops. Boy was I wrong. From LAX to our hotel at Disney, it took a bit over an hour in the bus. The was crazy to me – how could a city be so ginormous?

When we finally made it to Disney, it was so amazing. We first dropped off passengers at the Grand Californian which was beautiful and then made one more stop before getting dropped off at Paradise Pier, our hotel. I went into this trip thinking that I was a die-hard Disney World lover (I mean, it has so much more stuff!), but the fact that I could walk from my hotel, to Downtown Disney, to Disneyland, to California Adventure was amazing. Disney World is so spaced out in comparison, it was really a nice perk to not have to take a bus everywhere.

After checking in, we went over to the Health & Fitness Expo which wasn’t as crazy as I thought it’d be. There were no lines to get out packets and when we finally made it up to the Expo itself, it wasn’t too bad. I was expecting to elbow people left and right just to get to a booth of all sold-out merchandise, but I was actually able to move around at my own pace and find a shirt in my size at the official runDisney booth! Yippee!

We then went to venture around the parks, being sure to hit up Space Mountain and Star Tours (my faves from Disneyland). The park was slightly busy, with about 30 minute waits for rides but it was nothing like going during Spring Break to Disney World. That’s rough.

Eventually, we went back to the hotel to rest up because the next day my boyfriend arrived and my friend was meeting up with an old coworker. On Saturday we hit up the magic hour before our people arrived and got in a good half a day at Disneyland. We then went back to the hotel to collect Corey & Caroline and then headed out to California Adventure.

Mind you, this is a LOT of walking. The day before a half marathon. To say “dumb” isn’t correct enough, but I digress. We couldn’t resist exploring the parks since it was our first time ever out there. That night my feet were in sooo much pain and I could foresee the pain I’d be in after the race the next day.

After a dinner of pasta, we went to bed, giddy for the next morning’s adventure.

Sunday morning, I woke up around 3:45, showered, and headed over to my friend’s hotel room to finish up getting ready. We decided against wearing any extra layers which I think was a good choice. The locals were complaining that it was cool but for us it was still really warm compared to back home (um 50 degrees over 10 degrees? Shorts weather!).

We found our way to corral A which was so cool to be at the front. We got a good view of the presenters/ the starting line. When we finally started, I was kind of disappointed that there weren’t fireworks. I thought there were always fireworks!

The first few miles were pretty awesome because it was all through the park so there was a lot of stopping and taking pictures. We completed the first 5K in just over 40 minutes so that shows just how slow we were going! After the park, we ran through the city of Anaheim which was neat to see (since we probably wouldn’t venture out for the rest of our trip).

By the 6 mile marker, I was already feeling fatigue in my feet and legs (thanks a lot Disneyland) but at this time, we ran into (not literally) the Red Hat Society ladies. I can not express how awesome of a boost it was to have 100s of ladies in red cheering you on. It really helped get me past that little slump.

Once I hit mile 10 I was dying. My shirt was chafing my arm (DESPITE putting on body glide!) and my legs/feet were protesting further movement. We started walking a lot more but soldiered on nonetheless. Finally, when we got to mile 13, we could hear the crowd at the finish line and that gave me the energy to pick it up and finally finish this thing. We made it across the finish line in about 2:56 which made me happy since it was under 3 hours. Had we not walked so much at the parks, I think we could have easily shaved about 15 minutes off of that time (if not more!).

Overall though, the time didn’t really matter to me. I was so pleased to have finished a half marathon and I knew that my time would be slow because of all of the photo ops so I was happy 🙂

We easily spotted Corey at the finish line because we had bought him the Platinum Chear Squad package (which he loved – free food and easy access to the finish line!). We got our medals, took some photos, got our snack packs, and were out of there pretty quickly. I do wish that I had noticed that the back of the medal could be engraved with my time, but oh well. I just wanted to get back to my hotel and take a shower.

So in all, my first half marathon was wonderful. I absolutely loved running through Disney and having so much support along the course. Corey loved the atmosphere so much that he said that he wanted to do a race, too! So we’re planning on signing up for the Wine & Dine for November (plus, this will allow us to get a Coast 2 Coast medal and I love me some extra bling!).

Pictures are soon to come – I don’t have them on the computer I’m using right now but don’t you worry, there are some great ones! I’ll probably just make a post of my favorite pictures 🙂