Marathon Weekend January 8-14th, 2020: Day 4

Saturday January 11th: Half Marathon Day!
2:50am alarm. On our bus by 4am because there was a long line. Dropped off at 4:30am. Teri was with us since she stayed with us. We met Justin, Christy and Chloe and walked to the corrals together. It’s nearly a mile walk and the race starts at 5:30am. We didn’t have time to go meet Sam and Gail at the Cigna tent because it was getting close on time. Teri, Ryan, Justin, Christy and Chloe were all in Corral E, I was in F. We all got in line for porta pots by the corrals with about a 5 min wait or so. Sam was on his way to come say hi, he was in a later corral. I sent the crew to Corral E and I waited by F for Sam. We got a quick hi and hug before he went to his corral. The line for my corral kept growing and growing just to enter to corral. Turns out my corral had 8k runners and only 3 people checking bibs to make sure people are entering the correct corral. I finally got into my corral at 5:55am and the race started at 5:30am. Since they release corrals in waves, my corral wasn’t up to the start line yet. But I didn’t have long to wait now. I crossed the start line at 6:15am. I had gotten the text alerts that all my peeps had started a bit ago. It was a hot morning and was 71* and high humidity. My body doesn’t do well running in those temps. I ran with my cool cloth to dunk in water cups and just kept my pace super slow and allowed extra walk breaks to stay safe. We were under a heat warning. I had to make a quick pee stop within the first mile at the porta pots on the road. But that was the only stop I needed to make for the race. We ran from Epcot to the TTC to MK then back to Epcot. They had a lot of different characters on the course this year than I had in 2018. I was hoping to see the Genie in his vacation gear and actually stop for a pic, but he wasn’t out this year! I didn’t stop for character pics but ran by Minnie in her Liberty dress, Duffy in his Christmas sweater, Dopey by Mine Train, Horace the Horse and many others! I was very undertrained for this race and the heat was brutal for me. The only saving grace is we had cloud cover the entire time and I got a brutal headwind for a couple miles on my way back to Epcot. I kept dumping water on myself and soaking my cool cloth. I finished in 3 hours 22 minutes. Way slower than I wanted but my body was wanting nothing to do with running in the heat and it was in shock at running that distance since we hadn’t gotten many long training runs in. But I finished and got my awesome Donald medal! Met up with Ryan, Teri, Deedee, Henry, Justin and Christy in the reunion area. Chloe already hopped a bus back to Pop. Ryan had stopped in the Cigna Tent and grabbed me an orange juice to help my sugars. It helped so much! We got in line to get a picture with Donald, posted 45 min wait. Ryan went and got me a bagel with peanut butter and Nutella from the Cigna tent. By the time he got back the winds were really kicking up and it was starting to sprinkle. They pulled all the characters and said they would bring that back out if the weather permitted. We were tired and exhausted so we didn’t want to wait around, especially if there was no guarantee the characters would be back out. We were back to Pop by 11am. We let Teri shower first since she was just going to grab lunch and then get some sleep. I showered and then Ryan did. We got ready and swung into the food court to fill our mug. Teri was down there grabbing some lunch before heading back to the room to sleep. Ryan and I went to HS and used our Rockin FP at 1:20pm. Then our Star Tours FP. Then lunch at Dock Bay 7 in GE of ribs and fried chicken with mac and cheese. Yum! Ran into Deedee and family on our way into GE. We got some pics. Then SB for iced tea. We sat at a table for over 30 minutes, just drinking our tea, people watching and relaxing. Sky Liner back to Pop around 5:45pm. We ate dinner in the food court and had fried chicken and pot roast. We grabbed an oatmeal cream cookie for dessert. Back to our room and got our cheer bag ready for Marathon morning! Lights out at 8:30pm.
Miles logged 22.1 including our half marathon