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| The moon greeting us in the early morning! |
We all got to see the sun rise. We found the Port-O-Lets and then the sun was up enough to take some pre-race photos. Dancing Princess was Minnie Mouse for Halloween. I had gone searching for a dress for her costume and found one for me! I have never worn a costume in a race in my life! This definitely was a first. And I have never worn a dress in a race either. I did buy the polka dot leg warmers for the race, but made the ears for Dancing Princess and all the Mickey Hands for everyone.
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| They had "Snow Machines" going. In the photo here you can sort of see the snow falling. I am sorry I didn't get more of the costumes in this shot. They were really awesome. |
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| A bad shot of the starting line. Sorry, I am still perfecting my smartphone shots. |
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| Mickey was there too! |
What I loved about being in Corral A was that there were NO LINES to take photos with characters! I came over a little knoll in the course and there was someone waiting to take my camera and capture this AWESOME shot! Goofy as Santa, perfect. You can see my costume a lot better here! (Side note: A client of mine borrowed me this belt. I saw the company at the expo and they showed me how to use the bib number ties! No more pins for this lady, I have to get my client her belt back after I get one for my self, of course.) ;)
You can see the yellow cones on the right side of this photo. We took our picture and turned around to head back toward the park. As we did, I saw all of these hot air balloons. What an amazing site that was. Along with the beautiful sunrise and sky, what a great morning for a run. 
I think there might be some mist coming off this little patch of water. There was a man dressed as a Safari guy holding off crocodiles along this stretch of road too.
I know I used the Strava app to log this mileage, today was day 99 in my challenge to myself! What a fun way to mark this special day. This was not a timed race. The medal is really a rubber and I think it would be cool if it were really a magnet for my fridge. LOL!
I know after we all finished our events, (one of Deanna's kids ran their first mile race and had so much fun! Way to go everyone.) we headed back for lunch and naps. The half marathon start time was at 10:00pm. We knew we would have to wait awhile before the gun went off, so most of us took naps.
We are ready and at the bus stop. The forecast called for rain. We were hoping it would hold off until midnight or so, that way neither one of us would have to run in it for too long. No such luck. It was a sprinkly, spitty kind of rain. I was getting wet and Deanna had to wait longer to start. I prayed she would keep her feet dry before the race and I avoided as many puddles as I could during.  |
| A bad picture of the starting line. |
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| My medal, bib and t-shirt. |
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| Tink medal, Wine & Dine medal and Coast to Coast medal. |
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| The rewards from the weekend! |
Here are the finished run shots. Because of the rain, I couldn't get my smartphone to take pictures with my cold wet fingers. The Epcot photo was taken by SwimChick.
If I could, I would definitely do this race again on a non-rainy night. My official time for this half even in the rain was 1:59.01. I can't believe I came in just under 2 hours. I was soaked. I was given a special wrist band to collect my Coast to Coast medal from a special tent. Even in that tent, I didn't feel warm. I collected my gear and contemplated going to change into dry clothes and wait for Deanna. I waited for her at our designated location.
I am so thankful for the lady who gave me her foil blanket, it helped some. And even more thankful that Deanna finished un-injured and said she just wanted to go home and get warm. Part of me is sad we didn't take in the party. Honestly more of me was happy we could get on a warm bus and go home to a hot shower. In hindsight, I would go change next time and find a dry place to wait. And I should have taken a HOT bath when I got home.
This race ended after midnight for me, so I counted it as my 100th day of running in a row, too! What a fun way to do that.
During this race, I did not see many characters out. Deanna said there were long lines and lots of characters. I did see places where I thought there might be characters, but they were not there as I trotted by. I am thinking they brought them earlier and took them in to warm up and get dry costumes! LOL!
The next morning, most of us went to Downtown Disney and played at Disney Quest. My kids LOVED it. On Monday, we went to Animal Kingdom Resort for a delicious breakfast. Yummy food was had by all. That night was the Very, Merry Christmas Party. My family was so excited. I highly recommend going and hope to do it again another time. We saw fireworks, light shows, and an amazing parade. I have never seen a Parade that smelled of Christmas! Really as floats went by you could smell cookies and Christmas trees! We got to eat all kinds of Snickerdoodle cookies. Dancing Princess loved them so much she asked if we could make those cinnamon cookies when we did some cookie baking for Christmas.
What I am excited to share most is that Deanna completed an amazing goal of running 4 half marathons in one year! Considering she had not done one ever until we went to California for Tinkerbell, that is an amazing thing!
My next most exciting thing to share is that 2 of my 3 kids want to run a Disney Half marathon and 1 wants to do a shorter race! So we are now starting to save up for 2017 or 2018!
Off N Running,
AnnMarie
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