I ran my first 10K at Disney last week for the inaugural Springtime Surprise Weekend: Celebrating Yestermorrow! (What is Yestermorrow? My friend Kim and I decided it's that feeling you have post-race where you don't know what day it is because you woke up in the middle of the night just to be there.) I ran my first runDisney race in 2018 for the Princess 5K, and in 2019 I was lucky enough to join my brother-in-law for the Friends & Family Fun Run 5K! They were both at Epcot. There is a wealth of information all over the internet about the runDisney experience, but I still wanted to share mine!
Elyse--why did you run a 10K? I moved to Tampa from NY in the summer of 2016 for a teaching job, where I met my friend Kim, who had just moved from Michigan to be our school's Media Specialist. We joined a run club together to be social and get some light exercise, not knowing how seriously everyone there took running, or how fast and far they could go. They were equally as friendly and welcoming, so we came back every week to run/walk very short distances (turning around before anyone else and still not making it back first), and we'd all enjoy a beer together afterwards. We ran on Tampa's Riverwalk which is just gorgeous at night with the color-changing lights and beautiful buildings across the water from the University of Tampa.
Our school district offered a PD (professional development course) on staying fit, which was a free training course for teachers to get in shape for the Gasparilla 5K (Gasparilla is Tampa's yearly pirate celebration every February--it's a big deal). Kim and I signed up for the training, got some good tips, and went on longer runs each week to help us prepare, and we ran that race in 2017. Kim moved back to Michigan when the year was up (we had a horrible principal who would be fired the next year), but we made plans to get together again for our first runDisney race! It took us through Epcot early in the morning before any guests arrived. It was magical, and gave us gorgeous medals!
Kim and I talked about doing another Disney 5K this year. We enlisted the help of my parents to up our chances of securing spots in the race. Within minutes, the 5K had sold out. Kim and I had been anticipating this for months, and we were so bummed!! It was just devastating! Then Kim said, "What about the 10K?" She was able to register both of us, and the race didn't even sell out that DAY!
Then started the worrying. Can I run that far? What do 6.2 miles even feel like? I couldn't fathom doing a back-to-back 5K, but I started training, using the Jeff Galloway method. Except I couldn't get up to running for longer sets of time with only one minute of walking in between. The Buckley method turns out to be "run for 1 minute, walk for 1 minute (or 2, nobody's watching)". Over time, I was able to run for a FEW minutes longer than that, and kept my walking breaks short, but after a few months of training, I was only running up to 2.5 miles at any given time. My run club friends suggested doing 4 miles since I was weeks away from the race, and would have time to heal, but also to figure out how it felt (and what kind of blister bandages and pain killers I'd have to pack, thought I).
That weekend, as I finished mile 3, the toe next to my big toe went numb. I walked the 4th mile back to my apartment, feeling it start in the same toe on my other foot, and noticed my legs felt like Slim Jims (dried, chewy meat sticks). I worried. I asked friends and the internet what happened. I found out my shoes may have been too small, too big, too tight, or too narrow. I may not have been wearing the right socks. I couldn't believe that adding just one half mile onto my normal distance would have such an impact. The shoes had been a dream up till then.
The weather took a turn after that, in the weeks leading up to the race. I had to let my feet heal and try to get them back to normal before going on another long run, but the rain thought I should get more rest. Race weekend came before I was able to do another 4-miler, but I was sure the Disney atmosphere would propel me onward and everything would be fine!
Kim and I had heard a great deal about the dreaded Balloon Ladies followed by the "struggle bus" (the shuttle that takes you to the end of the race if you don't keep the required pace--that rhymes, and my completed song about it will be in my next post), which makes me think of Bubble Bobble when the screen would flash "Hurry Up!" as a warning before the terrifying skeleton ghost would come kill you unless you finished the level! STRESS!
We agreed we'd be fine taking the shuttle if we really couldn't finish. I picked Kim up from the airport after work on Thursday, and we went to see Frozen on Broadway (at the Straz in Tampa) as a treat to ourselves! It was great, and I put the final touches on my costume before we went to bed. We had a leisurely morning and headed out to our hotel and the expo. My next post will be all about the runDisney Expo!!
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