September Race No. 1

What a fun (and entirely TOO quick) weekend in California!  Due to a small flight delay and then a suspicious bag scare at LAX we didn’t make it to where we’d be staying for the weekend until about 12:00 a.m. PT and then by the time we actually went to sleep we’d both been up for 24 hours.  Little did we know that’d work out to our advantage….

Saturday can’t say we actually did anything THAT exciting (but that doesn’t mean we didn’t still have fun :)) with the exception of visiting the Health & Fitness Expo at the Disneyland Hotel which we didn’t get to until the very end of it.  (The picture below was our first attempt at lunch for the day which didn’t work, but we are proudly sporting our cool Go Sport ID shirts!) We managed to finally fit lunch in around 4:30PM and Beth’s high school friend Chris showed us around Laguna Beach and Dana Point before calling it a night.  We ate a very healthy pre-race meal of Dorritos and were in bed by 9PM.  That was the advantage of our late night the night before…we were exhausted.

That dang 3:30AM alarm came WAY too fast!  We made it to Disneyland a little after 4:00AM.  There were SO many people at the race!  The females actually made up 62% of the participants! Yah, ladies! 🙂 We were assigned to corrals and of course we were not put in one together, so Teal joined Corral D with Beth.

We started the race and per usual we were separated.  We both saw each other at different points in our dodging around people and about a half mile into it we were reunited!  This was our first race to pretty much run the whole thing together! It would be my guess that this was the worst race we’ve had in terms of dodging people and being cut off. The first four miles of the course we ran through Disney California Adventure and Disneyland Park.  So many Disney characters were out to take pictures and were a huge part of being cut off or having someone just stop right in front of you.  We had a really good pace going so neither one of us wanted to add time by picture taking with the characters.  Maybe next time?

There was a lot to see out on the course and amongst all the spectators.  For Teal the girl running with underwear outside of her pants that said on the butt “only 13.1 miles because I am only half crazy,” and for Beth it was the sign someone was holding that said “Running is a mental sport, so you are all crazy!”  There were a lot of people dressed up in costumes and we have to give props to the ones who were in legit costumes that probably added some weight like the man dressed as Mr. Incredible or the girl with Rapunzel hair who was literally carry the hair in one hand it was so long!

Our absolute favorite part of the race came when we were somewhere in mile 9 and we got to run through Angels Stadium!  The energy in there from all the people that were cheering everyone on was incredible.  We both almost started crying that’s how awesome it was for us!

making our way into the the stadium

After Angel Stadium we were almost to the home stretch portion of the race – the last 5k!  We both knew we were on track for a good time and kept plugging away.  When we saw the mile 11 marker our pace picked up.   We basically were at a point where it was going to be a matter of sheer will to get until 2 hours. Teal mentioned that she really at this point thought it was possible and our pace picked up big time. The very end of the course was one where you keep curving around and never really see the finish line until you are right there upon it.  But we finished and we now have new bling to add to our collection!  We both kept walking after the race and immediately found a place to sit down, stretch and gather our thoughts. We both gave each other a look and a very big, “great job.” This race seriously felt awesome in terms of weather and speed. Once we sat down the pain kind of hit Teal. She literally sat down and basically wanted to crawl out of her own legs. She had apparently run through a major shorts malfunction and was actually bleeding due to chaffing. It is seriously interesting the pain you don’t feel or shut off while running that doesn’t hit you until the end. Insane for sure and we can remember times in the past actually questioning how and why runners keep going. It really just seems to turn in to “it’s just what you do.” We sat for a while and then ended up talking to a man who had received an awesome Coast to Coast medal!  In order to earn this medal you basically run at both Disney locations within one calendar year.  The fact that this idea has even been introduced to us of course makes us seriously contemplate the idea of working towards one of those ourselves. They are awesome!

Results:

Teal: 2:01:36 and a new PR!!!  Finished 108th in age group and 1,668 overall.

Beth: 2:01:35, getting closer to the White Rock Half Marathon time!  Finished 107th in age group and 1,663 overall.

Remember how we gave up alcohol for the week leading up to the race?  Well, we finally broke that streak once the race was over! 🙂  We headed out to meet our friend Monica for a late lunch and some cocktails.  Spent the rest of the day enjoying time with friends over some wine and awesome views of Laguna Beach.