Race Review: The Tinkerbell Half Marathon

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It's done. I feel like I've been talking about Tinkerbell for forever, but really it was only June that we originally formulated the plan. The Tiggerific Twosome (our mother/daughter team that consisted of myself and my mother-in-law, Cindy) have completed our first Disney race! It was quite the experience. I awoke on schedule at 3:30am after less than 4 hours of sleep I apprehensively dressed up in my tutu and tigger ears and quietly snuck out of our hotel room as to not wake Griffin and Cody. I stopped in the lobby to eat my oatmeal raisin cliff bar and admire my tutu:

I met Cindy at our pre designated spot and we headed into corral "A" which gave us a great view of the start line and a couple pictures.

Before I knew it we were off and running, well sort of, we didn't get out of the mass of runners until after the 1st mile. We split up after the 2nd mile, we had decided beforehand that it was better to run at our own paces then we'd have the fastest combined time and perhaps a chance at making it into the top 3 mother/daughter teams. It was then that I realized I had forgotten to start my watch, darn! The first couple of miles were run in the outside of the park on the Anaheim streets, my excitement began to build as we headed into the back lot of the park, I knew the next few miles would be the most exciting part of the race besides the finish line. It was really neat running through the empty parks and seeing all the rides that were all running but of course with no riders on board. I stopped for a few photo ops and completely missed or ran past other ones:

I was disappointed there weren't more characters, I was really looking forward to seeing Tigger, but I never did. My 5k split was slower than the rest of my race because of the photo stops, 32:40.

By mile 5 we were back out of the park, through downtown disney, and onto the streets of Anaheim, this is when things got dicey. The excitement of the park was behind us and we still had the majority of the race to go. I ran along, wondering how those stops for photos was really going to affect my time. They had several cheer stations consisting of high school students and other various groups but I was missing the characters, I thought they'd have more disney related things even outside of the park because the park was such a small part of the actual race. But still, on I went in the dark through the unfamiliar streets, soon I realized we'd have to be turning in the other direction because we'd run straight away from the park in a straight line for quite awhile. We rounded a corner with a large cheerleading section and one of the many water stations (I barely used my fuel belt, there were so many) and then I knew we were finally on our way back and mentally that gave me a boost, the sun was beginning to rise and we'd be finished soon. At mile 11 I hit the last water station, the streets were beginning to look familiar, one was called "Disney Way" so I knew we had to be getting closer. The last two miles seemed much longer than the rest, no surprise there, and it wasn't the most scenic area, we were basically running behind the park and through a tunnel. I started to hear the cheering and caught my first glimpse of the finish and began to sprint. Then, I suddenly realized that we were going to take a sharp left and had another little loop before returning to the finish, I slowed down to my regular pace to save it for the end. When we reached the final stretch I once again began sprinting looking up into the stands for Griff and Cody, I never spotted them though because they were right beside the finish line and not in the stands. Apparently I could have grabbed Griffin and crossed with him, I would have loved that :(, maybe next time?

Because I started my watch late I wasn't really sure what my time was. About 10 or 15 minutes after receiving my medal and sitting down and stretching I asked Cody about my time, he couldn't exactly recall, said 2:19:00 or something like that. Or something like that?! That was pretty close to my last PR, he told me that I should check FaceBook because the results were being posted there live throughout the race (I had forgotten that I had set this up the week before). Frantically I grabbed my phone, 02:18:30! What if I hadn't stopped for those photos? No seriously I'm glad I did, I experienced a Disney race for what it was and it was definitely fun, no regrets. I'm debating whether or not to buy the photos taken by RunDisney photographers, $40 for one photo digital download... seriously?! If I do, I will post them here. Also, running in costume was pretty great, the tutu didn't bug me I think the last minute adjustments before I left (cutting it shorter and tightening the waistband) were a good plan because I never had to fix it or move it around much. If you want to know where to get an awesome tutu we found ours at Little Lily Belle. I bought a team sparkle skirt for a future race costume at the expo.

And in case you were wondering, our team didn't make it into the top 3, we were #10 so not bad, I'm proud of us. My #1 goal is always to finish the race and we definitely did that.

If you've been keeping up with the Disney posts, I added the photos from my camera tonight, so check the updates here:

Disneyland Day 1: Expo & What I forgot

Disneyland Day 2: 7 hours and counting...

After a quick shower we headed into the parks for a day of fun and celebration. I proudly wore my sparkle skirt and medal and the cast members in the park were all congratulating the runners and giving us high fives etc. Here is a photo we stood in line for 20 minutes to get:

Shortly after this I realized we had to get out of the park as it was getting to the point of ridiculous, I'm not sure I've ever seen so many people and such long lines in my life. Later we found out that people stood in line for 4.5hours+ for rides, no thank you! We headed back to the hotel for a rest and decided to hit downtown disney later, we didn't fare much better, a holiday weekend and a big event are not a good combination at Disneyland. I was just looking at the Run Disney race calendar and it seems that most of the races are on holiday weekends, something to consider for the future, at the very least maybe a reason not to buy park tickets in advance. Now it's time to pack up and go home. Two races for 13in2013 done and the realization that I am going to do a full marathon in my future maybe sooner rather than later... January has been a big month. 

(photo courtesy of the RunDisney FaceBook page)