Racing with the Rodent

This weekend, I traveled to Orlando to run the Disney Half Marathon. I left on Thursday and after a flight cancellation which actually eliminated my need to connect through O'Hare, I arrived in Orlando ahead of schedule and was met at the airport by the fabulous Miss D and her equally fabulous husband Col. M.

On Friday we headed to the Wide World of Sports complex for packet pick-up and the race expo. If I wasn't already aware of what a busy race this was going to be, we arrived and were directed to overflow parking. I think Miss D was a little overwhelmed that so many crazy runners assembled in one place at one time and that there were so many "goodies" available to buy at the expo. Afterward, we haeded to lunch at Downtown Disney followed by a bit of shopping.

After a carbo-loading dinner, I headed to bed around 8 p.m. since we needed to be up at 3:00 to drive over to the race. Unlike any other races I have run, we needed to be in our corrals at 5:00 a.m. for the start of the race at 5:30. When Disney advised to expect severe congestion, they weren't kidding! I think it took longer to drive from the Disney entrance to the Epcot parking lot than it did to drive from the house to Disney! Of course, given that there were more cars behind ours than in front of us, I wasn't worried that I was the only one being held up by race traffic.

The pre-race area appeared to have plenty of port-a-potties but I didn't stick around very long as it was at least a 20-minute walk to the race corrals. I arrived just as hey were singing the National Anthem. Good old Walt might have been defrosting though as there were a significant number of male racers "watering the ground" instead of waiting in line for the potties by the corrals!

The race began with an awesome display of fireworks. I think our corral started about 15 minutes after the first gun. I hung at the back of the corral. After the Bellin Run last year, I discovered I prefer this to starting toward the front. There's a little less jockeying for position and I don't feel a need to keep up with faster runners.

I was excied that this would be a flat course, but I severely underestimated the number of people running in each wave. Some parts of the course were extremely narrow and bottlenecks were frequent. I was also stunned at the number of people stopping and taking pictures during the race. I enjoyed seeing just about every Disney character, but I didn't feel the need to stop and pose for pictures with anyone (if I were to have stopped, I don't think I would have gotten started again).

I ended up with a finishing time of 2:23:41. My exact stats are:

8488 out of 21,953 finishers (38th percentile)
3511 out of 12,403 females (28th percentile)
619 out of 1,973 in my division (31st percentile)

All in all, I enjoyed the experience but it was not my favorite race I have ever run. I'd give the race an A for overall atmosphere, but the course and overwhelming number of participants (there were actually 28,000 registered runners) would actually receive a B-.