Star Wars Dark Side Half Marathon WDW: Day 5

Sunday April 23rd:
Star Wars Dark Side Half Marathon Day!!!! 2:30am alarm went off. We all got up and got ready.We were on our bus at 3:45am and were dropped off at the MK parking lot by 4am! They had some character photo opportunities available with various characters. We did a photo opp with Jabba the Hut with a 20 minute wait. The great thing they did for this race was they had a board with wait times for the meet and greets! This really helped you to determine if you had time to wait. Ryan wanted to wait for Boba Fett but it was a 50 minute wait and that would really cut it too close. We decided to head to our corrals. Teri and Ryan were in “C” and I was in “F”. I got in the endless porta pot line before entering my corral. It was about a 20 minute wait. But I had plenty of time. I was able to find our friend Jimmie in my corral! He’s a friend from church! So we stood and chit chatted while we waited. They did the corrals very differently this time. Normally they have one really long straight line and the corrals line up one after the other and you slowly walk forward to start the race. Well, this time they had the corrals line up side by side. So everyone could see the start line and the announcers. It was pretty neat! We watched the corrals start. They did waves and mini waves within the corrals so that only about 1,000 people started at each mini wave. I saw Corral C start and received the text alert that Ryan crossed the start line. I forgot to set up text alerts on Teri. But I knew they were going to start by each other. Corrals A-E all started forward in their Corrals. All of a sudden we realize that people are moving back and towards the side of our corral. Jimmie and I was near the front of our corral of 7,000 people. Well, due to the unannounced direction change, we were now at the BACK of our corral and behind 7,000 people, most of which will pace much slower than my pace. So we were in corral F6 on releases! I had received Ryan’s 5k check in and I hadn’t even started the race yet! The race started at 5:30am. Ryan started the race at 5:35am. I crossed the start line at 6:07am! Just a slight difference! We were under a yellow flag warning for this race due to heat. This is the first race I’ve ever ran under anything but green.They kept repeatedly giving warnings to slow your pace and to hydrate hydrate hydrate. At race start it was 71* and 80% humidity. So due to my placement at the back of my corral I was behind mostly walkers. I’m a run/walker so I’m used to myself and others taking walk breaks. But these people were hardly running at all. But we were on 1 lane roads and most of these people hadn’t participated in a half marathon before. So they didn’t pay attention to the rules of moving to the side to walk and letting runners down the middle. So I would get stuck behind people walking 5-8 people wide! So I was playing Frogger and watching for any opening to run through. It was still enjoyable, I never got my heart rate up. I enjoyed running through Animal Kingdom then off to Hollywood Studios then the trail along the Boardwalk and finished in EPCOT. I finally broke free of my herd around mile 11.5 but by then, the sun had burned through our cloud cover and it was wicked hot. So I couldn’t get my pace up because it was just suffocating.

There were tons of characters on course, especially since they invite members of the 501st to line up at various spots along the course. So fun! I was pleasantly surprised that I only finished 11 minutes off of my desired finish time. I guess I was weaving somewhat effectively! I really liked this race course because we finished by running by SSE and the finish line was just outside the park exit! It really gave me the push at the end! I received my half marathon finisher medal, my Kessel Challenge Medal AND my Coast to Coast Medal!!!!!! 3 Medals!!! I got my finisher pics and Ryan joined me too. I met Teri, Deedee and Henry. They were all pretty spent from the heat. We waited a bit longer and Jimmie finished and received his 3 medals since he did Star Wars Light Side at Disneyland in January too! We directed him to the buses. He could just do a short overnight trip and had to head home. Teri, Ryan and I went to meet Boba Fett with just a 15 minute wait!! Teri wanted to head back to the room to shower so Ryan gave her his magic band so she could get in the room. My plan from the beginning of this race was to go get Starbucks right after the race because I was wearing a tank top with coffee cups in colors that represented C3PO, R2D2 and BB8! We were given the wrong directions to leave but it allowed us a great opportunity to get a photo with our medals and the finish line behind us, per a CM’s suggestion! It was cool! So we went the correct direction. It was around 9:45am and the Starbucks line was a good 20 minutes long and out the door! But I didn’t care! I got our iced drinks and met Ryan outside. We sipped our drinks while we waited for the standard hotel bus. It was about 15 minutes before it pulled up.

We got back to Riverside just and Teri was leaving our room. Her family with there to pick her up with her stuff and we would meet them at Magic Kingdom. They left their car and took the bus to avoid having to park at the TTC. Ryan and I showered and got ready. We were in MK by 1pm. It was getting close to the end time of our Jungle FP at 1:20pm and we were hungry. So we changed it to a 5pm FP. We went to Pecos Bills and split nachos. So yummy!!!! Teri and Corey and their families were all on People Mover together and it broke down! We walked over there and could see them just as they were getting walked off. They were given FP’s. We all went to Buzz for our FP’s. Then to Thunder with our FP’s. Since we all had extra paper FP’s from People Mover breaking down (Ryan and I broke down our first day there), some of our party went to Splash and some of us went to Space. My niece decided at the last minute she didn’t want to ride Space so my sister sat out with her. SO there were two extra FP’s so my niece and Corey’s oldest went and rode Tomorrowland Speedway together. Corey and his family needed to head home and left around 3:30pm. Ryan and I took castle pics with Teri and her family. We walked them up front and said goodbye. Ryan and I grabbed Dole Whips while we waited the 15 minutes for our Jungle FP window. Deedee and Henry had FP’s for it then too. So we all rode together. We took castle medal pics all together. They were heading home tomorrow. So they did last minute shopping before heading back to Riverside. Ryan and I had already polished off our water, so we went to Starbucks to get Venti waters and a Magic Kingdom/Starbucks 45th anniversary mug.

It was around 6:15pm and we decided we wanted to go to Disney Springs since MK was pretty busy. We went to Morimoto Asia Street food and shared sticky ribs and pork bao. Sooo good! This is our must stop on every trip! We finished eating around 7:15pm. We walked through the Co-Op and World of Disney. We took the boat back to Riverside around 8:30pm. We were to our room by 9pm. We ate our dark chocolate caramel from Germany we picked up the other day. Lights out at 10pm I have no clue how we stayed up so late! That was a long day!
Miles logged 24.3 including my 13.5 miles from the race