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!

One thing I love about running

The only thing the road cares about, is that you visit it every once and a while

Disney Princess Half Marathon Training Week 5-11 days!

Feb 06-12

Monday Feb 06    After a really bad running day, the day before, I knew I needed to go out and try and get more miles under my feet. So Josh and I went back to Flatwood Park (a park with a paved running trail through the woods). It's mostly used for bikers but I've seen some runners there as well. The thing is about this trail is that it's a BIG loop through the forest with no shortcuts. Once you stop you either have to turn around or go the entire 7+ miles. It has about 4-5 covered bench areas with water but I need more water than that, SO I tried my new hand held water bottle I bought for long runs like this. It has a strap around the bottle so I can just slip my hand into it. I LOVE IT. It doesn't leak, it doesn't feel uncomfortable, I may post pictures of it later.
     The first 3 miles I was doing a lot of walking/running. I'm really trying to pace myself. I would run almost every other chorus in the music I was listening to then speed walk the other times. At the first stopping point I asked my husband how I was doing. He was like "you know you're wearing yourself out more by all this stopping in going. If you really want to train you need to find a comfortable pace and stick to it" (he's ran a 1/2 and a full marathon before).  So after our break (3.5 miles into the run) I started just joggying/running. I picked a pace that I could keep and just stuck with it. It was somewhere around 9.50-10'02. I would go until I couldn't go any farther, then I would speed walk. I would also use points in the trail as check points (I'm going to run to the bridge then stop). That helped a lot. ANYWAY I ended up running much faster than the previous time. I didn't run farther BUT I was happy that I just did it. I ended up running 8 miles in 1 hour and 35 minutes, at a pace of 11:50 (with all the walking at the beginning didn't help my pace..but it's under 16, so..that's all that matters).

Tuesday Feb 07
    Giving my legs a rest I ended up doing 2 Turbo Fire video's Core and Tone. I love core. It's my favorite video.Tone is really good because it works the ENTIRE body. With Turbo fire you're never just working 1 muscle group, she always does the arms and lower body at the same time!

Wed. Feb 08
    Wed. is my bible study group day. After running a few errands I finally put in a 20 minute run right before bible study. I was mainly working on keeping a steady pace the entire time (like I did with my long run). I did 2.01 Miles in 20 minutes at a 10:13 pace.
     After the run, My husband had the car at his job so I rode my bike to my bible study. It was a 3.4 mile ride but I did it in 20 minutes at a 10:02 pace, not bad considering I just did my run!

Thursday Feb. 09
   Oh goodness I was having horrible stomach pains this morning (:P). But, I Just tried to be thankful that it wasn't going to happen during the race. SO, I did 2 Turbo Fire videos- Lower Body and Core. The first time I used the lower body bands in Hawaii, I couldn't walk the next 3 days. It's an intense workout with an elastic band (tied in a knot)around your ankles. You're doing leg kicks, hamstring extensions, and even ballet moves with the extra resistance.   Pretty excited!!! There is an exercise were you take a tied elastic band and put it around your ankles. You are sitting on the floor with your knees bent and feet on the floor. You leave your right foot on the ground and you grab the left leg around the knee. Your goal is to extend the leg your holding fully while the resistance band holds it down. My left leg used to only make it 2 inches up and then start shaking really bad. That's as far as I could push it. As of Thursday I was able to fully extend it! I'm thinking the reason for my knee pain is the weakness of all my leg and hip muscles in the left leg and my knee is compensating for it. I try to do this video at least twice a week, I've really seen some great results and can't wait till I can do the entire video all the way through without taking a break.
        I did another quick run before I had to pick up my husband for work. I did 2.52 miles in 25 minutes, not to bad. Tried to just maintain a quick pace of 6.9-7.0 the whole time.

Friday Feb 10th.
   I didn't run, still having pretty bad stomach pain, so I just did more Turbo Fire videos. I did the Core, Upper Body, and Ab video. The Ab video ALWAYS kills me. It's ONLY 10 minutes long but I always just want to lay on the floor and do nothing afterwards! LOL BUT I want a 6 pack and I'm doing everything I can to get there! We also went to Jacksonville and saw Jeff Dunham, it was hilarious! Great show.

Saturday Feb 11
   We stayed the night at my sisters house and drove home today. We were both exhausted (the show didn't end till 11:30, got back to the house around midnight) then had to do the 3 1/2 hour drive home. With a huge construction patch it took us about 4 hours to get home. We were still pretty tired so, I just had a day of rest with a LDR - Long distance run in mind for the next day.

Sunday Feb 12
  The weather had been REALLY crazy here. It was so cold one morning I had to scrape ice off of our car on the way to take my husband to work! IN FLORIDA LOL...brr, SO I decided to do my long run on the treadmill. I did really well up to miles 4-5. I ran the entire time was keeping a pretty fast pace, but I think I was going to fast and burnt out all my steam. I was dragging through  mile 6-8, I was trying everything I could to just push through it. I ended up just speed walking every other song and then trying to run again. I was pretty tired BUT I wanted to do a double digit run!... but, I made it the pace wasn't pretty BUT I was excited that I didn't quit and I just pushed through it. My Nike + watch accidentally got turned off  instead of paused SO I wasn't sure just how far I had gone. By the time my Nike Phone app said I did 10 miles, My watch (which is also connected to my foot, which I think is more accurate) said I did 10.45, If I would have known that I would have kept pushing till 11. OH WELL. I did it, 10.45 Miles in 1 Hour and 45 minutes at a pace of 10:20, Not bad at all :) Probably have one more double digit run before the race :)

Thanks for reading!