At the end of February, I participated in my SEVENTH runDisney Princess half marathon weekend by running the Enchanted 10k. It was my first time “just” running the 10k, and it was nice to only have to wake up super early one morning! I did miss the beautiful bling of the half marathon and the challenge, but it was a nice break to just worry about one race, and I had a blast!
By pure randomness, I ended up running with my friend Jen (the other Jen unfortunately couldn’t make it) and it was her very first runDisney race! It was fun to show her the ropes and see how much she enjoyed it.
I woke up at 2:45 with plans to catch the 4:00 bus from Caribbean Beach resort. Normally I would sleep until 3:15, but I bought a last minute Moana costume on Amazon a few days before I left and had never tried to “fix it” for running and so I knew it may take awhile to figure out the best way. (Note I do NOT recommend
this strategy, especially for a half or full marathon!) I knew I would be fine for 6 miles even if it was uncomfortable.)
As predicted, it did take some time (and a LOT of safety pins) to get my costume situated, and I was out the door at five minutes to 4:00 and was met at the bus stop with a super long line. The problem was, I was in the Jamaica section which was the last pick up, so by time the buses got to us they were full. Finally they sent and empty bus straight to our stop and we were able to get on about 4:10 or so.
I was texting Jen and saw we were both in A corral via her Instagram photo. She had been injured, but we decided to run together until she started to hurt then her plan was to hang back and walk while I went on ahead. Worked for me! I finally found her and then some other friends and blog readers chatted with us and then it was go time!
We realized a little too late that they had already closed off and moved corral A up to the front, and we were bummed we had missed it. So we got in B, and saw they will still letting people into A if they could get to the front, and that’s a big “if”. B was packed full of people but we gave it a shot and said excuse me about 100 times and I can’t believe it but we made it up to the tape and they let us in our corral! We were in the third and final wave of corral A but that was totally fine I was just excited we made it up there.
Soon it was time for our wave to take off. My plan was to run a comfortably hard pace (so maybe about 75-80%?) and get ahead of some of the picture taking crowd, and then maybe have some short lines in EPCOT because of it. Honestly, the first three miles are pretty boring anyway, so Jen and I just chatted and passed the lines as we made our way to EPCOT. We had plenty of running room and there were only a handful of people around us which was nice. We got into EPCOT and stopped for the first time (for water) strike that—I stopped at mile 2 to rip off and throw away my grass skirt #CostumeIssues. It was driving me crazy. Seriously people, do as I say not as I do.
Anyway, we took a picture by the mile 3 sign just before we made it into a back entrance to the park and stopped for these guys becasue there was no one waiting.
We grabbed water, I took an Insta story video, and we carried on around the World Showcase. I love how the torches are lit during this race! We came to a character stop, Pinocchio, and saw there were three people in line. I asked Jen if she wanted to stop, which she did, so the fun began!
I also taught Jen about finding the green tents to get photopass pictures.
We took off again, and soon saw another character stop, this time for Genie! Again, maybe 3-4 people in line in front of us so it went super fast.
Making our way around, we stopped in France for Marie.
Then it was time to exit the park and run around the Boardwalk, which I really enjoy. There were plenty of spectators along the route which was fun. Of course we had to stop for Goofy by ESPN club. He probably had the longest line with about 8 people ahead of us.
Soon we were running back into EPCOT, and the race was almost over. Jen saw Pluto basically hiding off to the side and we snagged a quick picture with him before running towards Spaceship Earth.
It was really humid and it was starting to get to me, but we were almost done!
I was surprised that my quad nor knee were bothering me, but definitely not complaining about that. We grabbed one more quick picture with Figment in a nod at the upcoming Flower and Garden Festival, and then we were in the home stretch.
I loved that I got so many photopass pictures, and there are even more I’m not posting. Sssoooo many.
So we saw the finish line in our sights, and threw our hands up, with a finish time of 1:13, which I will gladly take with all the stops we made! Also i haven’t run more than three miles since Wine and Dine in November (oops). I Honestly had a blast at this race and it didn’t feel like work or not fun, which is honestly one of the reasons I haven’t raced as much lately, so i was glad to find some joy in this one! I mean, can’t you see it on my face?
Loved loved loved this race, and am so glad I ended up not having to run it alone. Thanks so much runDisney for a fabulous time!
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I remember running by a discarded grass skirt on the route and thinking, “yeah, that would have gotten old!” Maybe it was yours? What a fun race!
Haha it was somewhere between mile two and three!