Princesses for a Day: Race Recap

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Our alarm clock went off at 3:00 a.m.! Holy cow, Disney! We get it – you want everyone to get through and out of your parks before they open, but that is one early wake up call for a 5:45 a.m. race not to mention you HAD to be in your corral by 5:00 a.m. or ELSE! Ha (Guess who wasn’t in their corral by 5:00 a.m.??) We got dressed in our princess costumes and were out the door of Sheraton Safari by 3:40 a.m. ready to face race traffic.  Pretty sure we in the car for an hour which gave us time to make peanut butter sandwiches to keep us fueled.

Yummy - peanut butter sandwiches made with Beth's finger! Ha

Once we parked we had a good 20 minute walk to our corral, so we decided to not stop to use the rest room because it was slight madness. Plus we were running late at this point to get into the corral on time.  When we got to the corral area we knew that Heidi was in corral B so we began looking for her just knowing we would see her at the front of that corral.  Good thing we started looking early because there were Heidi & Brian at the front of corral C. Apparently if you are a Prince running this race you can’t go any higher up than corral C.

such a colorful picture!

We are not quite sure how it happened but we both were assigned the same corral for like the first time EVER and we were in corral A! It was awesome to be up front in a line of 20,000 people!

see how close we were to the start line?

We started right on time! Way to go Disney and since we had made getting to our corral a priority over anything else we both decided to make an immediate stop at the first port-o-potties we spotted on the course!  The whole first of half of the race flew by so it’s hard to remember everything by miles totally.  Our plan was to run together, treat it as a training run and take pictures with characters when we wanted to do so.  The competitive side to both of us still lives on a bit in that we still wanted a decent time despite the stops, but again we were fortunate to be in corral A because this gave us the advantage of being in front of thousands of people who would want to stop as well.  We did stop at the first group of characters that we saw….

We loved how real looking the step sisters and Cruella Deville were!

Cinderella's Castle was the half way point of the race

The volunteers out there were awesome!!  We didn’t even have to ask someone to take that picture, the volunteer noticed us stop and she just came up to us and asked if she could take the picture for us!

We really didn’t have a plan at who to stop at or what we wanted to do we just knew that we wanted to see our princesses! We ended up stopping at Buzz Lightyear who of course is a favorite not only to us but our little nephews!   As you will find out through our pictures it’s a good thing we stopped because Princess Ariel ended up not being on the course! 🙁

the other side of Cinderella's castle

Somewhere in the mile 7 part of the course we found Beth’s character – Belle!  Wonder what all the characters came up with to say to people as they were having their picture taken because Belle said to Beth “it looks like you’ve been in my closet!”

Speaking of mile markers! We loved the signs for each mile!  At mile 8 we finally snapped a picture of one:

There were a couple of hills in the last few miles and thanks to one of the toy soldiers from Toy Story for the encouragement to conquer the hill in  mile 10.  It was amazing how his voice was exactly like the movie!  We’ve said before we aren’t really big on stopping and starting on a run which is completely a personal preference we both share.  The picture breaks were hard on our bodies, but we pressed on despite that.  In hindsight it might have been a blessing in disguise that Ariel was not seen out there because our last stop at Belle was rough!  Our bodies might have been hurting but  with the kick we gave it at the end you never would have known!  If you look at our runkeeper entries for this race Teal finished her last .1 in a 6:20 pace and Beth finished in her last .1 in a 8:03 pace.  Perhaps this speaks to how it’s hard to have a GPS device be completely accurate as we crossed the finish line right next to each other.  A more accurate pace would probably be an average of the two times something more in the 7 minute range.  We were hauling!  We are really good at keep training runs JUST training runs. 🙂

Half Marathon number eight is in the bag!  We did and our very proud of ourselves!  Our official time was 2:13:35 exactly for both of us, and we tried to stop and start our runkeeper when would take picture breaks because we wanted to know the difference :), so that time was 2:03:49.  By the time we were finished both of us had A LOT of our fuel for the race leftover – swedish fish.  Once Teal got some ice on her foot and knee and Beth put biofreeze on her knees and calves we grabbed our checked bag and were out of there to find food. We were staaaarving!

Isn't it purdy?

So now we have 1/2 of the Coast to Coast challenge finished and just need to complete Disneyland Half Marathon in September which we thankfully got signed up in time as it was sold out before we left for the Princess Half!  Check back with us tomorrow to see what all we did in the non racing parts of the weekend! 🙂

Tagged: Beth Edition

1. Which of your race medals is your favorite? Why?

It’s hard to say a medal other than the New Year’s Double medal.  I mean seriously, the weight of it! The way it’s put together and how we got it! It’s just awesome plus it does represent the first time ever doing back to back half marathons, BUT I will say that the White Rock Marathon medal comes in verry close to the NYD medal!

2. It’s a leap year! What are you going to do with your extra day on February 29th?

Probably just be thankful because it being a leap year enables Brent & I to get married on the day that he proposed to me – October 27th!

3. What food can you not live without?

I definitely go in stages of the food I LOVE! Goldfish for a long time have been the food I love but I rarely buy them because I’ll eat the whole bag. Ha, but for awhile now it’s been egg rolls. Ha I looooove egg rolls! I eat a lot of Lean Cuisine’s version of them to not be eating high calorie egg rolls.

4. What race is your dream race? Why?

I would say that my dream race is The Kauai Marathon!  Absolutely love Hawaii and then Kauai is just beautiful! I’d love a chance to go back there and run!  Plus the view on that course? Has to be amazing!  Because of the time difference, travel time and money I’d need to save up for that race it seems like a dream!

5. What cartoon character are you most like? Why?

Uhhh, well cartoon character automatically makes me think about Disney and if I had to pick a Disney Princess I think I’m most like I’d say Belle and conveniently that’s who I am dressing up as for the Princess Half at the end of the month!

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6. Does each pair of sock have a “left” sock and a “right” sock?

Uhh, they are socks. Ha, if I manage to have two that are the same or even have two at times it’s a miracle! 🙂

7. What is your favorite way to cross train?

SPIN!!  I’ve been regularly going to spin class for about 5 years now! I own a pair of spin shoes because I love it so much!  You know how runners (myself included) get a runner’s high? I also get a spinning high!

8. What is your favorite race shirt?

Ummm, I don’t totally have one. Just love races that give me long sleeve regular shirts! The design of the Dallas Turkey Trot shirts are always great!

9. Do you have a bucket list?

Nope!  My friend Rebekah and I once had a list of things we wanted to do locally, domestically and internationally but I think I lost it.  Bucket lists are great and I’m interested in what I’d come up with to put on it….

10. Do you have a certain song that you always put at the beginning of your playlists?

Not really, but I kind of get addicted to certain songs.  For example – Sean Kingston’s Fire Burnin’ LOVE singing that song. Ha, I memorized all the words to it. 🙂

That body is a masterpiece the order is one in every hundred years but ain’t no doubt I’m takin’ it home, home

Little mama game about to change, She’ll be on covers all over the world 🙂

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkyhvCdJ_vM&ob=av2n]

11. Do you think I am crazy for signing up for the Tough Mudder?

Yes, haha, but a good kind of crazy!  Betsy you are awesome and will do GREAT! I feel like I’d hurt myself in that type of a race!

11 Random Things:

1.  I am a fourth Swedish

2.  I went to the same private school here in Dallas as Chace Crawford from Gossip Girl…know who I’m talking about? He was two grades below me and I remember seeing him when I was in 10th grade when I’d go over and take pictures of the middle schoolers for yearbook. Kind of gave you two things there – yes, I worked on the yearbook at my school.  Also, if you’re a dude and don’t know who I am talking about – his sister married Tony Romo.

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3. I hate talking on the phone. Ha.  When I was little I was SOOO shy that my mom would make me call the pizza guy and anyone else like that so that I could get over my dislike for talking on the phone and especially to people I didn’t know.

4.  As a little kid I just didn’t talk much and was reeeeeeally shy up until I was in high school.  My poor youth pastor & his wife took me to lunch when I was 12 years old and I maaybe said 20 words the whole time. Haha, oh how times have changed!

5.  It really isn’t represented enough in our blog, but I’m an Aggie!  WHOOP!! =)

6.  I’ve been to the ER twice in my life and both trips were within 48 hours of each other. *knocks on wood*

7. I LOVE movies!  I have been going to the movie every week with one of my friends for a little over 3 years now.

8.  With that last one said my all time favorite movie is Empire Records!

AJ: What’s with you today?

Lucas: What’s with today, today?  

So many great quotes and songs in that movie!

9. The Laughing Toilet – that’s what my older bro, older sister and two older boy cousins started calling me for a brief period of time when I was little.  Apparently at the time I was sick and if I started laughing I’d start coughing and it was a deep cough so you know that sounds like a laughing toilet?  Toilets laugh? Older siblings & relatives can be so mean! 😉

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10. As a child I LOVED Barbies! I played with them until I was like 10 years old….uh, all my friends had stopped at that point. But not all of my friends had cool Barbie clothes their Grandmom sewed for them like I did!

11.  I got the chicken pox when I was 5 & 6…I say 5 & 6 because I had them on my birthday. 🙂  Neither one of my granddads had ever had the chicken pox so I remember sitting in the front entry way of our house with the door open waving at them and them standing by their cars telling me happy Birthday from there because they weren’t going to get any closer to me.

As an added bonus for the few Colorado peeps that read our blog and because 12 is my favorite number –

12. If I had to tell you one thing my family repeats about something I did as a kid it would be when we were on a family trip to Colorado and I said “Hey, dad, does Ouray have a telephone?”