Goofy Challenge: The Donald Half

After a fitful night of sleep, my 2AM alarm was the coffee pot starting.  Yes, I had decided to sleep in the living room after the first night in the house.  The coffee pot was akin to hearing a dog peeing in your sleep......it woke me up - which was great!

I started moving, albeit slowly, and realized that my eyes didn't agree it was time to get up!  My cell phone looked odd and my eyes were just tired.  Alas, I could hear my friends beginning to stir and I knew it was time to get up.  We were really going to do this thing!

After dressing, eating, double-checking the fuel belt and applying Aquaphor, we got on the road right at 3AM.  In fact, we were all ready and dressed by 2:47AM.  We're hard core like that.

Since our house on MinnieHAHA Circle in Haines City was about a half hour from Epcot, we had to be precise about getting there and parking.  It worked because we were literally at the beginning of the runners feed.

Walking through the Mickey ears.

Since we were lucky enough to have access to the Jeff Galloway tent (thanks Amanda!), we all scooted over there for free drinks, advice, cleaner port-o-potties and some pre-race refueling, etc.  And of course, pre-race photo opps!

Mandy, Melissa, Dan, Amanda, Me

Yeah, the eyes were still tired.

I couldn't understand why no one else was up and posting on Facebook when we were!  Hmmm, maybe because it was still 3:30AM??  Who knows??!!  For being there as early as we were, the time really did go by fast.  After eating second breakfast, we started to join mosh of runners/walkers heading to the start line.  There were some really interesting costumes and LMAFO kept coming up in my head.  You know, the part in Party Rock Anthem where they sing "Everybody's shuffling?"  Yeah, because that's what we were doing.  Somehow on the way to the start we ran into Leana, fellow blogger again!  In a crowd of tens of thousands, it seriously was a small race.  This time, we were not blogger fails and got a picture!

Mandy, Leana, me

Unfortunately, the long, shuffling move to the start meant we didn't get to see the fireworks or hear the anthem.  The nice part is the bathrooms were completely empty!  

Amanda and I had agreed to stay together the entire race.  It was the first time I had actually done that since my first half in 2009.  I am glad we did!  It was awesome to have company and be able to share the experiences of Disney with her.  Neither of us wanted to race this race - just wanted to have fun - so it worked out perfectly.  One of the things I loved about this race was there was no lacking of things to see.  I didn't realize it at the time, but the Cinderella castle ended up being my favorite view!

Standing around?

There was a bit of a jam up coming out of the castle as runners/walkers were pulled into a line to get a picture of themselves running in front of the castle.  Both Amanda & I weren't interested so we skipped it.  From there we went through Tomorrowland, Frontierland and a whole bunch of other Disney stuff I don't know well.  There weren't many characters on the course that either of us wanted to see - and I'll admit - quite a few I didn't know, so we kept cruising along.  The race was going well enough that I told Amanda I wanted to slow down to enjoy the rest of it and get to that finish!  We popped into the port-o-potties around mile 10ish and someone tore open the door on me so I got to flash all my goods to the race course!  Awesome!  If you haven't tried it, its a must do......no, seriously.  Okay, well maybe you can skip this.

The course winds you back to Epcot via an highway overpass and Amanda & I both were not loving the heat.  It was then I realized I needed to make sure I modified my Sunday plans and take it slower then planned.  The finish line never looked sweeter! Arms up! Sunglasses off!  Time to cross and collect our medals!!

This was my first time wearing a running skirt and for that matter - a headband but I loved the skirt!  When I first bought it, I thought "one wear item."  Now?  I can't wait until summer so I can wear it again!  It was awesome.

The finishing corral was really easy and we met up at our rendezvous point of the Q meet-up tent relatively seamlessly!

Mandy, Amanda (she wears skirts on her head), me

Day 1 - Done!

We heading home to refuel, rest, relax, relax, relax!  At one point during the afternoon, we were all sitting in the living room, sharing our race stories and one by one we all passed out.  We went back to the Expo that afternoon to trade shirts - they were men's cuts and I think all of us but Dan needed to make a change.

After a visit from surprise friends from home, we were back in bed by 8PM.......2AM sure was going to come early the next day!