Our alarm went on this morning at some ungodly hour - I think Luke got up around 3am but I insisted on sleeping an extra half hour and didn't get up until 3:30am (which is still gross). Luke always eats breakfast - like every single morning. I do not, I need to be fully awake and functioning for a few hours before I feel the need to eat anything - this is why I slept extra
Luke told me he ate some Frosted Flakes (which are apparently different in the States?) and an apple - both of which we had ordered from Garden Grocer.
Eventually, I dragged myself out of bed and put on my favourite pair of Lulu Lemon's and a Nike shirt. But, it was also fairly cold out so I also put on my jacket. Luke and I went out and had to walk allll the way across the street to catch an internal bus (the bus stop was so close to our room, I LOVED it!). The internal shuttle dropped us off at the main building at Old Key West, where we boarded a runDisney bus to take us to the starting line.
The bus dropped us off at Epcot, and then you walk the 37,000km to the security line for the race before entering a large pre-race area. Once we reached this area, we realized we still had over an hour before the race even started, and we were in Corral D so we knew we'd be even longer than that.
Luke kept asking what I wanted to do, but all I wanted to do was sit on the ground and be a grumpypants. I don't do well with early mornings, and I was not happy about being up. I took a grumpy-face selfie and posted it on my Instagram haha.
Initially, back when I signed up for the 5km, the plan was to be up to running intervals of 10 minutes at a time, then walking for 1 minute. That did not happen - last summer was a bit rough with my Crohn's disease, and I ended up being switched to a new medication at the end of August. That worked great, so I started training with Luke in September. Then, in November, I started getting sick again (it's when my psoriasis first appeared), and I ended up with double eye infections at one point, which lasted for weeks. So, no training for that month. I got back to it a little bit in December, but I wasn't even doing 5 minutes at a time of running by the time we left for Florida (which is actually still impressive for me haha). So, even though I wasn't where I wanted to be with running, and I was not happy about being up so early - I was still really excited about my first ever 5k!
I had to take some pictures of some of the screens to prove I was there:
Eventually, I was fully awake. We both went to use the lovely port-a-potties, Luke filled his armband waterbottle and then we headed off to our corral. When we signed up, we both put the same expected time, hoping we would be placed into the same corral, and it worked! We were both in corral D, which was fine by us.
In the past, they would start each corral in 10 minute intervals, but they decided to do things a little differently this year. They sectioned off each corral into smaller sections, and then had a new group of runners start every 2 minutes. This new method definitely sped things up - with the old method, corral D would not have started the race until 6:30am (Corral A - 6am, B - 6:10, C - 6:20, etc). According to the time stamp on my pictures, we received the "Go!" at 6:22am, so 8 minutes faster than it would have been in previous years.
The first stretch is boring, and goes around some Epcot parking lots. It was also still completely dark at this point, but the path is very well lit!
When we started, I was actually feeling pretty good, so we immediately started a slow jog. We actually didn't have to go very far before we came upon the first character meet of the race - Thumper and Miss Bunny! (I didn't know her name at the time, I had to google that). We joined the line, since it wasn't too terrible, and it moved along quite well. RunDisney events now use normal Disney photopass, so you just have to make sure your bib number is clearly visible and then you can just link all your photos later. It was very easy, and we ended up with a lot of pictures throughout the race!
Just as the people in front of us were about to go up and get a picture, Thumper stepped away and went on break, so we only ended up with Miss Bunny.
After that, since we had been stopped and resting for 5-10 minutes, we started jogging again. I was surprised at how good I was feeling, I think I had a little adrenaline from the excitement of the race.
Before too long, we hit the Mile 1 marker (but I didn't take pictures of any of those). This was around the same time we were in the backstage area of Epcot, running underneath the Test Track tracks (from the speed part of the ride).
Soon enough, we were entering the World Showcase at Epcot! Right after entering, we noticed the Vikings were out in Norway so we stopped for another picture. This line was super short, and it only took a few minutes before we were continuing on our way.
Of course we had to stop for a selfie with Spaceship Earth in the background!
As we ran past Italy, we saw Minnie Mouse out for a character meet, but her line was huge! So we made the decision to skip that one. Somewhere around here, one of the race photographers snapped some pictures of me looking like I'm off in my own little world hahaha...
As we approached Morocco, Chip and Dale were out, and their line wasn't terrible, so we stopped
How cute are their little outfits?!
The character meeting in Canada had a CRAZY long line, but we said screw it and waited in it. We were probably 25 minutes at least before we reached the front of the line, but I just had to meet Canadian Donald Duck!
I've never seen this character costume before, but I love it! Plaid jackets are pretty popular in my hometown, and I've owned a few myself so this was awesome.
After this, we left the World Showcase and ran out the International Gateway, where we hit mile #2. We then re-entered Epcot, running past the Seas With Nemo and Friends. At some point, we saw another character meet, this time for Goofy, but we decided to skip it and just keep going. I did slow down enough to snap a picture of Goofy's outfit though
It was a pretty exciting moment to be running up to this:
Once you ran past Spaceship Earth, you leave the park where you hit mile #3, and the final stretch to the finish line. I was pretty gassed by this point, but I promised Luke I would run the last stretch with him, so I pushed through.
And then we were finished! We were both handed our race medals and a snack box.
And we stopped for a photopass picture with our medals
Here is a picture of the race map I found online:
And that was it, I was finished my first ever 5k! It was slow, since we did stop and wait in character lines, and I didn't run as much as I originally wanted to, but I did it! I think we did end up running/jogging for about 60% of the race - so now I just have something to work towards beating on my next runDisney 5k!
I love that character spot meet but have only done it once because the FP line was sooooo long.
it seems like if you are patient and diligent you can get what you want. That's sort of how we did all of our fastpasses for this last trip I went on. Wait until the night before... see nothing available. Refresh MDE about 8,574,221 times and then POOF a primo FP at a primo time pops up. And repeat.
I hope you've been comforted by happy memories.
Glad you guys had fun.
