Glass Slipper Challenge – Day 3 Half Marathon

The last day of the Glass Slipper Challenge weekend ends with the half marathon.  I took the time the night before to lay out all my race gear, get my food and tea prepped, and had most of my bag packed for the trip home.  All I had to do was get up when my alarm went off at 3:30 to plan on being on the road for 4:30.  I was on the road at 4:30 but there were major traffic issues.  I didn’t arrive at my parking spot until 5:21… the race starts at 5:30.  However, as I was making my way to the corrals, Mandy sent me a text and then I got a Tweet from runDisney that due to the traffic issue, they were going to delay the start of the race.  I was concerned about that because I had a very tight window of time for when I could finish the race, shower at my hotel, and be at the airport for my 12:20 flight home (more on that later).

I got down to the corrals after the start of the race.  I was in Corral G so I wasn’t worried, but I did run into a problem.  As the corrals moved forward, the volunteers for the corralled sections wouldn’t let me move forward to Corral G.  I was stuck in Corral H.  Had I been there 5 minutes earlier I could have snaked my way up to where Mandy was.  I told her I was stuck and that I would meet up with her.  She told me she’d stay to the right of the road so I could find her.  My corral was released at 6:01 and I kept a pretty consistent run the entire first mile.  I stopped for a picture of the mile marker and then continued over the bridge and on the road towards Magic Kingdom.  With no sighting of Mandy, I called her.  She and Kenn had to make a pit stop and I found them and meet up with them on World Drive.  As you can see from my splits, my first mile was quicker because I ran most of it to catch up with them.

After I caught up to Mandy we ran past the photo stops which were the Pirates of the Caribbean and further up was the heroes.  We took our usual pictures at the Magic Kingdom toll gate and then continued to run towards the Magic Kingdom.  Again, the plan was to save our time for photo opportunities in the Magic Kindom.  The photos along the way were the Incredibles, the Evil Queen, Maleficent, and then the drummers were at the TTC.  My favorite DJ was on the overpass leading to the Contemporary.

Once we got into the Magic Kingdom we planned on using a real bathroom, and then I knew to look for Sam Ganow from the Mickey Milers and Kenny from Team Shenanigans.  Found them and proceeded on towards the back of the park to Fantasyland where we wanted to see who was going to be out for photos.  We skipped past Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum and found Gaston.  He was the longest wait for us.  This was between miles 5 and 6.  The Beast was the next photo stop after Gaston, but the line for him was VERY long, so I took a selfie with the Beast in the background.  We ran through the castle and towards Frontierland.  We skipped the photo with Woody and Jessie and ran on towards backstage.  Sadly, because the train was being refurbished it was not on the tracks on the way to the backstage area.  They had Cinderella and Prince Charming at the large float backstage, but that was a very long line as well.  We continued up through cone alley and tried to run as much of that as we could to make up for the time we spent taking photos in the Magic Kingdom.

After cone alley was the Penguins from Mary Poppins.  Then I found Richard from the Floridian!  I found him during the marathon weekend as well!  The gentlemen singers were on Floridian Way as well as vacation Genie on the golf course.  I had been tracking my friend Kim and saw that she was catching up to us and I spotted her just before mile 8!  We stopped for a quick picture and then pushed on.  This part of the race gets boring and I had a plane to catch so I didn’t want to slow down at the end.  We set up little mini plans to make up time and make that portion of the race course more tolerable.  We’d run up to a water stop and then walk.  Then run up to the mile marker and then resume our run/walk intervals.  After mile 10 we decided to run the entire ramp up to the bridge and walk across the bridge and then run downhill towards mile 11.  It was good to keep pushing forward because by that point in the race it is easy to decide to walk it in for the end.

Finally, we were in Epcot and there were a few chances where we wanted to get some photos.  We took one with Daisy just near the turnaround, and then attempted another jumping photo in front of the waterfall.  Then we brought it in for the finish.  I HAD to get my Fitz hug before the finish line and then we took pictures with Donald and Goofy!

Our fourth Glass Slipper Challenge is accomplished.  Just one more year to go in hopes to get legacy status.  With the announcement of a new name for the challenge next year, we aren’t sure that we will be recognized for doing five consecutive Princess weekend races in a row.  The same holds true for Dumbo; so I think once Dumbo comes around we will know what the result of that will be.  But I still enjoy this weekend with Mandy and Kenn and it’s a nice race to run mid-winter to keep my mileage up.  Considering I hadn’t run longer than 4 miles since the WDW marathon, I felt great during these races.