Running Disney: 18 and Life

I'm running out of time. That's just the reality. I can talk about my knee all I want, and it won't matter. On March 20 at 8:00, the gun will go off and I'll have 26.2 miles that I can either run or not, and all the excuses about my knee hurting or work taking up too much time or having bronchitis won't mean a thing.

My knee was quite sore after my Inner Harbor Wind Advisory Adventure run two weeks ago, but it held up ok, and I've been determined to catch myself up as much as possible with more frequent runs to re-build my stamina. This meant taking the running gear to Florida and trying to sneak some miles in during the early morning hours.

We stayed at Disney's All-Star Sports Resort, and it allegedly had a jogging trail. Perfect! Not quite, but not entirely worthless, either. The jogging trail was one mile long and it ran from the All-Star Sports Resort, past the All-Star Music Resort, and terminated at the All-Star Movies Resort (all three are virtually identical, they just feature the differing themes). This would make for a very boring run indeed.

However, on my first run on Saturday morning, I found that going in the other direction the sidewalk crossed under the highway (which may have just been an access road to the parks) and continued past Disney's Blizzard Beach water park (closed for refurbishment) to the Coronado Springs Resort, another one of the lesser-known Disney properties.

This turned out to be very fortunate for me, as the Southwestern-themed Coronado Springs proved to be a great place to run, with a roughly one-mile loop around its central lake and several other paths weaving through its buildings and around the edge of the resort.

Starting at our hotel and running toward "Movies", around the Movies resort, and then to and around the Coronado Spring, back to Movies and then back to Sports, I was able to get to 10 miles in 1:39.

Running in Florida is markedly different from running in Manchester, PA. At the beginning, before the sun came up it was pleasantly cool, but extremely humid. When the sun came up, it burned some humidity off, but felt oppressively hot. Each day turned out to be warm, but not unpleasantly so for visiting the parks, but it felt extremely hot to someone who had been training in PA. The best thing about this course was its flatness -- there was nary a hill to be found between the resorts, and my IT Band certainly appreciated it.

This weekend was scheduled to be the last real long run before a two-week "taper", in which long runs were shortened to rest for the marathon. Since I hadn't been able to get the distances I needed in, I decided to try to get a real long run in on Monday morning, the last day of our trip, rather than just another 10 or so miles.

I left our room before 5:30, wanting to give myself plenty of time.

(I was the only idiot up at this hour)

I varied the course a bit this time. I headed down toward All-Star Movies and ran around that resort a bit longer this time, encountering everyone's favorite giant toy spaceman.

(To infinity and beyond! Or at least down to the next resort.)

I then added some boring miles on the access road between the Music and Sports Resorts, and headed back to Buena Vista Drive toward Blizzard Beach, where I circled the empty parking lot to add more distance. It was still very dark out at this point, as I turned back down the sidewalk path it did occur to me that the swamps just to the right of the path were probably loaded with alligators. Friendly, singing, animatronic gators, but gators nonetheless.



I had about 7 miles in the bag by the time I got to Coronado Springs this time, and ran enough laps around its two lakes and the outside of the resort to be at about 13 by the time I left. It really is a beautiful place to run.

There was a convention or sales meeting at the resort, and so as the sun came up there was increasing foot traffic on the paths, along with little golf-cart buses that were picking people up who didn't want to walk to breakfast or to their meetings. It seemed to be a convention for people who wanted to stand in the paths and smoke, so that was somewhat inconvenient, but I shouldn't complain since I was the intruder in this situation.

I headed back to the All-Star resorts and realized I'd made a slight miscalculation. By omitting the Blizzard Beach parking lot and a Disney employee parking lot I'd ran through on the way out, I got to Sports resort at 15 miles. I wanted to do more than that, so I pushed myself down the path toward the Music resort, up the access road that ran between Music and Sports, and then back to the jogging path for Movies.

I was moving v e r y s l o w l y at this point, but I dragged myself back to the entrance to Sports as my Garmin showed 18 miles: my longest ever by half a mile and my longest by over 3 miles since my knee injury.

I was exhausted, and my legs felt like they could hardly go another step, but I was absolutely encouraged by the lack of knee pain.

Was it enough? I hope so. The lack of hills was probably a good simulation of the Shamrock Marathon course. The temperature was probably a little cooler at the start and a little warmer at the end, and with a lot higher humidity than the I'll likely see in Virgina Beach in March. It'll probably be painful, and it certainly won't be fast or fun, but right now I think I can grind out those last 8 miles.

I won't have another chance to find out till the Marathon: my trainer for my marathon training group and my orthopedist have both suggested I start tapering, which means 12-15 miles on Saturday and 10 the following Saturday, and since they're all in agreement I'm not going to argue.

It's going to be a challenge, but hope is not yet extinct.

(T-Rex Cafe in Downtown Disney,
where we had a great lunch before heading back to the airport)

Hail to the Princess!

My wife, Chris, and I have taken our running shoes on more than one vacation over the last three years, and we'd stayed overnight to run some races that were just outside of a normal morning drive, such as Baltimore or Philly, but we'd never before taken a real vacation in which the primary purpose until my wife signed up for the Disney Princess Half Marathon in Orlando, Florida which took place this past weekend.

Our adventure began as more of a misadventure when arrived at BWI to find that our connecting flight from Long Island to Orlando, was canceled due to a high wind advisory that had shut down the Long Island airport all day. We were put on a 2:50 flight that stopped at Norfolk, VA, but we would not have to change planes. An inconvenience, but a relatively minor one: we were stuck at the airport but would arrive at Orlando only two hours later than originally scheduled.

So we thought. We browsed the many shops in Terminals A and B, bought some magazines, and had a nice lunch at the Silver Diner in the concourse. A good time was had by all. Until we got to our gate and our plane kept not landing. Apparently, due to high winds it had circled BWI for 40 minutes before diverting to Dulles. It was not able to return to BWI until after 5:30, and we weren't in the air until approximately 6:30 -- two hours later than we should have been in Orlando.

So there went our plans to visit Downtown Disney that evening; we arrived at our hotel, the All-Star Sports Resort at after 11 and were able to grab a quick dinner at the resort's food court and a drink at the pool bar before going to bed. At least we got enjoy the warm Florida evening for a little while.

On Saturday morning, we ate a tasty breakfast at the hotel and headed to ESPN Wide World of Sports, which was nearby our hotel, for packet pickup and the chance for my wife to grab some Princess Half Marathon gear.

We spent the afternoon at Epcot, mostly in the World Showcase section of the park, where we ate a delicious carb-loading dinner in fake Italy, and found that Disney had invented a new character, allegedly Mickey's teddy bear, which doesn't appear in any movies or stories, that exists solely to be bought and dressed in outfits from every "country" and all over the Disney empire. It gave us something we'd make fun of for the rest of the trip.

Because the Princess Half Marathon takes place on the access roads and grounds of two of the biggest theme parks in the country, if not the world, there are some logistical challenges for runners. We were advised that my wife should be on the bus to the staging area outside Epcot by 3am, and she had to be in her corral by 5:00, even though her wave was to begin at 6:21. This meant we got up at 2:15.

In hindsight, it seemed like this was overkill, as we were left standing around for over an hour before she left for her corral, and I headed out to grab a spectating space near the starting line. Each wave departed to fireworks, which was cool, but I watched 17,000 women -- and a few guys -- run or walk by with no sign of Chris from my not-so-great vantage point. Meanwhile, a cool, humid morning gave way to a warm morning. What was pleasant for spectators must have felt like 100 degrees to the runners who had trained in more northern climates like Pennsylvania.

I took the monorail (MONORAIL...MONORAIL...MONORAIL!) to the Transportation Center stop, a hub where passengers park and can board or switch between the Magic Kingdom line and the Epcot line. While on the monorail, I got my first glimpse of Chris, who was probably at about mile two at that point, because soon after arriving at the Transportation Center I got the runner tracking text that she had reached the 5K point. I had a spot by the fence outside the Transportation Center, and saw her running up. She stopped very briefly to say hi and was then on her way.

I took a short walk across to the Polynesian resort while Chris ran through the Magic Kingdom. I was starting to think I'd missed her in the crowd of runners, and I looked up from my phone and the "Chris Tracker" sheet with her estimated mile times to calculate whether I should move on, and I happened to look up and see her approaching. It was mile 8 and she looked great!

I took the monorail (IS THERE A CHANCE THE TRACK MAY BEND? NOT TO WORRY MY HINDU FRIEND!) back to Epcot, and waited at mile 13. Soon, she approached and ran by to the finish of her first half marathon!

I always knew I had married a Princess, but now she had the big shiny medal to prove it.

(Unfortunately, the coach did not go to the finish line.)

Not only did she run an awesome race under some pretty adverse conditions, between getting up at 2am and running in whether 50 degrees hotter than she trained in, she spent the rest of the day hiking around Disney's Magic Kingdom.

Congratulations, my Princess. You have waited patiently for me at more finish lines than I can count -- I'll cheer you on any time!