2011 Disneyland Half Marathon - Race Recap

Date: September 4, 2011
Location: Anaheim, CA
Start: 6:00am
Finish: 1:51:23
Elevation: flat!










I woke up at 3:30am this morning to get ready for the Disneyland Half Marathon. A very early wake up time even for me. I had to get up early because I was planning to wear a costume to run and needed to make sure that I had everything with me. I got to Disneyland in a timely manner but had no idea where the entrance into the parking lot was so I circled around a bit until I finally found it 15 minutes later. Good thing I left home early.

$15 for parking, ouch! I found a space in the Goofy lot! I put on my costume in the parking structure...

and headed into Corral A where I waited for an entire hour for the race to start. Luckily the weather was nice this morning so it wasn't too chilly. There is a very small window of prime event arrival time. I was late to a race a couple of weeks ago and early to the one today. I guess better early than late. I just hate waiting around. Not too many people dressed in costumes in Corral A. I felt a little girly standing around in my tutu amongst all the serious runners. You know who else is running this race, Drew Carey! Who knew?

Fireworks went off at the conclusion of the Star Spangled Banner. The race started promptly at 5:59am with the wheel chairs participants and then at exactly 6am Corral A took off.

Running through Main Street USA.

So you can probably guess from the following photos that I decided to run this race for fun and not time. I decided that I was in no condition to PR at this race so I took the opportunity to run in a costume, something that I've always wanted to do and it was great! It was just so much fun running dressed as a fairy! Bringing my camera and taking it all in was the way to go because Disneyland is just too cute a place to speed through. 

At the castle but I can't remember what mile this was.

Joking around with a couple of pals!

Toon town!

This was around mile 5 or 6 when the sun was about to rise. Blurry!

Then I didn't take any photos for a while because we were just running around the streets surrounding Disneyland. I did run into Emil out on the course somewhere, can't remember what mile that was. He always says the same thing to me...something about needing medical assistance at the end. He did pretty good today and no medical assistance was needed!

These next couple of photos are of when we entered Angels Stadium.

 Really fun and cool to run around the field and see yourself on the big mega-tron screen!

Wow, this is what happens when you don't pay attention. I think this was me taking a photo of the finish line. Let's never do this again!

This is me at the final sprint. My face is jacked up in this photo, not to mention the awful heel strike but it does show my wings in use...haha! They did not help me one bit. In fact, I got a terrible big cut from them some how. 

I am so out of running shape as this race felt hard to me, just like the previous race even though this course is mostly flat. I think I need to concentrate more on my running and less on my spinning for the next month if I want to do well at Long Beach. I was so happy to see the finish line so that I could stop running. So happy! Just as I crossed the finished line, I heard the announcer say that Drew Carey had finished a couple of minutes prior. Drew Carey beat me! How do you like that?

Not as much post race food variety as I had imagined for a Disney race but it was really organized. Let's see, there was bagels, bananas, oranges, mini Clif bars, Powerade and water. Oh and they handed out these packaged moist cotton towels at the end but they were moistened with menthol which I had not known until I wiped by face with it and it sting a bit. Lesson learned, read the package first dummy!

They had bagels and that is all that matters to me.

I walked around the finish area for a bit to cool down before I high-tailed it out of there. I got out of that parking structure with ease as runners were still loitering around the finish area. I had not wanted to be stuck in a traffic jam getting out later. Plus, I was on a time schedule to leave for my trip. 

Fun, fun, fun! Thanks Disney, you sure know how to put on a race. And yes you are really expensive but I really enjoyed it and maybe sometimes that is all that matters. I am looking forward to coming back next year!

Plus the medal is pretty sweet!

Teddy: Heavy too! Momma this thing weighs a ton!

Pre-race Commentary: I've wanted to run this race for a couple of years now but the high registration fee has held me back until this year. I want to see what the hype is all about and why this race warrants the high reg price.