Tinker Bell Half Marathon - Recap

Do you know what 3:38am is??

Really freaking early for a race wake up call.

But still later than Becka and I woke up for Princess Half Marathon. RunDisney, the things we do for you....

There was surprisingly little chaos considering there were 4 chicks getting dressed, and my Emergency Bag o' Sparkle helped costume up a couple of us.

We headed down to the lobby to meet Julie right on time, then over to the neighboring hotel to catch the shuttle to the start. 5 minutes later, we're walking miles and miles through Downtown Disney to the starting area.

Miles might be an exaggeration. But it felt like forEVER.

We managed to miss the Half Fanatics picture (again), because we seem to forget that everything at Disney races take a billion years. The upside to showing up (relatively) late, though, is there was NO ONE in line for the restrooms.

Headed over towards the corrals, and randomly ran into Dave!

Becka is the speedy one in our group, and was legit in corral A. The rest of us were B... so Becka started with us. She's awesome.

Since we knew we were going to be acting ridiculous, and taking a billion pictures, we started at the very back... which gave us a fantastic view of the men forced to start in Corral C. And man, they looked UNIMPRESSED with that. Particularly one that we named Angry Red Guy. He looked angry, and within the first mile, angrily sped past us. Heh.

Anyway. Starting line. Fireworks. Off we go.

Now. The course.

Disney World is an entirely different beast than Disneyland. WDW is surrounded by.... Disney property. The entirety of the races there are all run on WDW property, so there can literally be characters at any point on any race. Disneyland, however, is surrounded by Anaheim and Garden Grove. So the majority of the race is run on the city streets.

Miles 1-1.5, boring, dark, slow, billions of people.

And then, the pictures started. And the ridiculous.

We came out of a tunnel next to It's a Small World, and ALL THE PRINCESSES!

And it was downhill from there.... We stopped to use the real bathrooms. Stopped for EVERY character picture. Stopped to take ridiculous pictures in front of the course photographers.

{what is happening!? Capt Hook is a dirty critter...}

{running!}

{yes, yes we DID stop mid course to pose. That happened.}

This is how you end up with a 1:08 5K time (and, ps, our 1st mile was in the 11:30 range.......).

At mile 3.5-ish, we headed out of the parks, and onto the streets of Anaheim.

Mile 4.5, we were captured being obnoxious by Team Sparkle paparazzi...

At mile 5 we took an extended restroom/water break, and stood around while we downed our GU's (and by now, we were like a zillion hours in, and FAMISHED).

Mile 5.5-ish, we crossed over from one side of Manchester Ave, to the other, but had to go over a raised median. Really, RunDisney? Bizarre.

Mile 6.5ish, two interesting things happen. First, we're made aware by the course monitors that we're about 12 minutes ahead of the sweepers (the ones who collect the folks not meeting a 16min avg pace). Ridiculous happens....

But second, we pass a bakery/coffee spot. And voice our desire for a latte. And get told by some cranky chick that, apparently, it IS NOT LATTE TIME. Noted, cranky-pants.

This was about when I started feeling bad - some of these folks were legit working hard and killing their own race - that was what they trained for, and they were executing their plan. But some of them were just not trained, or not doing well, or whatever, and we were... Ridiculous, and having fun, and being super obnoxious.

Sorry I'm not sorry?

Miles 7-9 were through kind of a sketchy area, with bars over windows and doors, lots of liquor store, and blah. Around mile 10(?), there were some sorts of military garbed men high-fiving and playing music - that was awesome.

Mile 11 we headed back into Disneyland, this time via California Adventure...

{He's my FAVORITE! He makes me SO HAPPY!}

{our reserved energy was used to sprint in line for characters. You know, so we could save time....}

{so many arms, flailing}

Around mile 12.5, we were ROASTING. It was SUPER sunny, and a billion degrees, and hello, it's been a billion hours. And the cast member said.... just one more turn! You're almost there! We have no legit idea, because our Garmins were all reading different mileage.

Turns out? Not one more turn. Not one more at ALL. Dirty liar. There were a few turns, a small hill, and then some more turns, and the smallest chute ever. We sprinted in what we thought was the last 800 (lies). And....

Giant size-of-your-face-spinning-Tink medals.

Team Sparkle snapped a rad picture of us at the finish line (and provided the world's most delicious donut ever ever EVER)....

and, seriously, did you SEE Julie's costume?? Amazing.

After, we walked a BILLION miles back to the shuttles, and waited for (I swear) 10 years.

For an inaugural race, it was all pretty smooth, with only a few exceptions - 1. one of the early aid stations ran out of Power Ade; 2. The up and over the median course weirdness; and 3. The walk back to the transportation area was not well marked, and the buses were erratic.

I'm being nit-picky, because RunDisney should know better on all three counts, but none of these are really deal-breakers. I'm totally doing Tink 2013.

Anyway, back to the hotel, then to lunch at Red Robbin...

Then Kat was awesome and drove Becka and me back to my place, where we extracted all the kids from The H (did I mention he hosted a slumber party AND baby-sat everyone while we raced and ate lunch? He's pretty rad), and tossed them in the pool.

Strangely, Gabby LOSES HER MIND when her eyes get wet.

Yeah. That's her being escorted out of the pool to dry her eyes. Weirdo.

Took Becka and A to the airport (BOO!), then headed out for dinner with the H and kids.

Delicious.

The end.

Official finish: 3:20:46

5K Split	1:08:40
10K Split	1:52:03
15K Split	2:28:54

Ha.