Disney Princess Half Marathon February 26, 2012-My adventure through wonderland

So, things have finally slowed down so I figured I'd catch up with a recap of the race!

I LOVED IT ! Depending on where we are living this time next year, I REALLY HOPE I can come back and do this race again!!!

Overall it was VERY organized, well ran, and had an amazing time!!!

I'm going to just make this post about my race experience, then possibly another about half marathon tips, things I wish I did and things I'm glad I did, so, stay posted for actual tips for half marathons.

My husband and I decided that we would splurge and get a hotel room the night before the race. We live about an hour and 1/2 away and thought about driving back and forth but, gas was getting so high, we decided to get a room. I made the arrangements early February and am GLAD I did. When we checked into our hotel room on Saturday the attendant told us that hotels were filling up that morning at 9am. The NBA Jam, thing Finals were in town as well as people for the Daytona 500 were staying as far south as the Orlando area.SO Just FYI get a room early for this race!

The morning of I had been crossing my fingers (and praying ) that we would not have to deal with too much traffic . The last marathon my husband ran was horribly planned. He ended up having to run 2 miles just to get to the start because they only had 1 gate open for over 20,000 to enter through with their cars....:P

Just making sure my outfit fits and works the night before. I ended up safety pinning my tutu in 3 places around tank top in case it would fall while running.

We were staying about 12 miles out and left around 3:50. I was standing at the entrance to the race area around 4:15. VERY excited. The announcer told us that we needed to start making our way to the corals so, I said goodbye to my family and headed to coral F. NOW here is my first thing I wish I would have known about THIS part of the race. They say in the brochure that you MUST be in your coral by 5am or you will not be able to start with your group..um.. SO not true. I'm pretty sure they make this as a guideline just to get everyone heading that direction before hand. Once we went through the tents designated just for runners there were over 70 port a potties. I think I waited 25-30 minutes. It was about 4:45-4:50 and there were STILL 100's of people waiting in line, so, yeah, they weren't going to just say no to all those people, which brings me to Tip 2. I wish i would have just passed all those port a potties and waited. There were about 15 right by the corals with NO LINES. I was like MAN I wish I would have just waited and gone there.. LOL OK sorry enough about the port a potties.

So we made it to Epcot HORRAY!

Dressed and ready to go. Many of the races have a deal where you can wear clothing, on top of your race wear, to keep warm in, and then right before you start running you can take off the layers and throw them to the side. They will donate all the clothing found to charity.  So I went to Goodwill and got 2 articles of clothing for $2.99 each.

The beginning of the race for my coral.

 I started in Coral F. They had a start (fireworks and countdown) for each coral. It was really awesome to see the fireworks every time. I like that they did this to make every group feel special, not just the fastest runners. It also really broke up everyone to where you weren't tripping over 1,000 people for the first mile. The race started at 5:45, My coral crossed the start line at 6:15.

There were over 20,000 runners in the race. This is probably just 1/3rd of one coral. Look how dark it is! lol Hooray for starting at 5:45.

The time beside me is not MY time, it's the race time of when the first group crossed the start line.

Hello Boys!

 YAY FINALLY MADE IT!

 Mile 3!!! passed a 5K!

 I thought this was funny! It says " real men arn't afraid to run like princesses"

Mile marker 4, random lady LOL

 Really awesome, this ladies sign said "pardon my pace, I have 2 others on board"

 WE MADE IT! Magic Kingdom!!!!

 CASTLE!!!!!!!!

 TOO CUTE

Hooray!

 This is def my favorite picture!

 SO EXCITED!

 Bye Bye Castle!                                                                  On to Mile 6

Some of my favorite Disney Characters!

Pretty!

My family caught up with me LOL, :) still going strong!!!

 2 really cool characters

 Mile 8!!!!

 This is the farthest I'd ran the entirety of my training, so I was pretty psyched!

 3 amazing girls I met along the race!

 Wahoo!!! 5K left to go!

This women was awesome!She had her left arm in a sling and was walking with a hiking stick, she would pass me every now and then when I was taking a walking break.

 1 Mile to go!!!

 We are INCREDIBLE!

 Hello Ms. America! lol

ALMOST THERE!

 Hooray!!!

 Check out this bling!

It was an amazing race to run for my first half marathon! It was really well organized (compared to the LA marathon my husband was a part of last year). Getting to the race was really easy (really light traffic) and the morning was lots of fun. I only wish they would have put a packet together for beginners or something. I had to do lots of research on other people's blogs to get questions answered. Maybe I'll do one on my next blog for the group running the race next year.

 I ended up finishing in 3:18:00 from the time I crossed the start line. I wasn't looking for an special time to finsin. I did run a lot of it but also stopped a lot (hence the many pictures).

Thanks for reading!