Disney - Part two - The Princess!

More more more! 

After the 10k we just walked around at the park. We switch hotels at some point and ended up at the Contemporary for a night. The hotel was nice, I liked the ambiance of the POR better... but the location of the Contemporary can't be beat. Of course, it's on the monorail... that was the idea. You take the monorail to Epcot where the race starts. We splurged one night. There was definitely more space to spread all of our stuff out, desk space, shelf space, more space. The idea was to go to bed a little bit earlier for our race tomorrow. Of course I can't remember how well we did. I tell you, it's all getting mixed up! I think we did okay?

We got up at three again to get ready and since we had been pretty good at laying all of our "flat me's" out the night before it went smoothly. We were out the door. In case you are wondering, this is what Epcot looks like at 4:00 am on princess weekend. It's pretty isn't it?

With a group our size you kind of feel out to see if anyone is running your same pace (we have runners who run sub 10 min miles and others who will be pushing the 16 minute mile with photo stops. A few girls were also nursing injuries. I am about in the lower middle. Bonnie and I had traded texts the day before and decided to run together and I was pleased that her nemesis was planning on running with us (I likely crashed their party!). Of course her nemesis in costume only, Kristen was Mother Gothel to Bonnie's Rapunzel. 

Thank you Bonnie for a lot of these photos! 

My downhill first half positioned my quite nicely in the group. I originally qualified for corral D but moved back to F to start with most of my friends. Of course, it wasn't an accurate representation of my actual time on a NOT net-downhill run, but you know... 

Somehow we were running behind the rest of the group so we hurried past the bag check where we were supposed to meet them and started the hike to the corrals. It is quite the walk. I wonder if anyone actually kept track of how far it was, it has to be at least a mile, maybe more. Somehow we ran into the rest of us on this walk! 

My girls: Bonnie, Patty, Julie, Tania, Amy, me, Kristen, Wendy and Suzanne. 

We lined up and move over to the edge and I took these pictures of my and 23,999 of my closest friends. 

This is facing forward (That bright light is the starting gate).

And this was behind me. Al the way to corral P.

I was one of approximately 5,382 Snow Whites. But their mama didn't make their costume...

A couple of my roomies. We are awesome.

One of the first major photo stops was the Pirate ship with Jack Sparrow and Captain Barbosa. The line was HUGE. This is a very popular stop and not a surprise. We went right by that. Up ahead there were the boy heros, also a long line. We opted out and decided to stick with whatever intervals we were doing, I think it was run 9 minutes walk one? But it was all willy nilly as no one was tracking time. It was whenever we felt like it. 

Before Magic Kingdom we saw the big draw, the villains. The line was predictably long but we chose to wait in it and luckily enough our friends found us in the line! Yes! They jumped in and we assured everyone behind us we were all one group and only two or so cel phones so it wouldn't add to their time. It's not terribly uncommon for runners to run ahead and hold the line so it wasn't a big deal to the princesses behind us. We chose to fuel at this point because we were within a half mile of when we would fuel anyway. The line really picked up from there and we were out in a flash and back on our way. 

I would have to really look at other people's pictures to see which characters were out and about because I don't really recall all of them We decided to get Tiana's picture taken today. 

Somewhere around here we got our picture taken with Buzz, we marveled at how short the line was! This cast member was ON IT. He was so fast! But... maybe too fast because my picture was blurry. Wah wahhhh. If I do get discounted Marathonfoto pics, this will be one I choose because it it cute, but I am too cheap to pay as much as they want for it. Silly cast member. 

There was line for the royal Mickey and Minnie that wrapped along the new Snow White Mine ride's wall, it was LONG. It didn't look that long from the end, I mean, it looked long, but the girls had me run ahead to take a peek and the line kind of went in to a curve and then wrapped the wall which added maybe an additional third to what we thought it was. At that point, we hopped out of line. C-ya Mickey and Minnie, we have a price and that ain't it.

We had to take a picture with this mile marker. Kristen and Bonnie took one alone and then I crashed for my photo op. (To our credit, this time is the time the FIRST corral started, and not when our corral started. We were slow, but we need all the credit we can get!)

In the stretch back to Epcot we were able to hit a few of the stops that we had passed up on the way out. The men folk (Isn't Flynn a dead ringer?) 

The pirates - When were about fifth from them Jack Sparrow went off for a break? Wahhhh... we waited for about five minutes and settled for Captain Barbosa. (Poor guy, when people saw it was just him they were dropping like flies...) He was HUGE! We also fueled at this point while we were at a stand still anyway. 

I made Bonnie take this picture while we were waiting... get it? Get it? Poor girl, I made her get down on her knees, after running ten miles. It was not the nicest friend thing for me to do...

I am not sure where Mrs. Incredible was... but this was fun.

Sophia the first was when we rounded into... someone help me here? Epcot? I clearly have no idea where we ran all weekend... but you know. You tell me to go, I follow the tutus. (Bonnie knows her stuff and she has a far more accurate timeline as to where the characters were on her blog.)

And our super awesome finish picture. Great running partners! We ate the hills for breakfast! Woohooo!

Bonnie's official picture. 

The bling!

After the half I was alone, Bonnie and Kristen had their families and the others weren't done yet so I grabbed my stuff. Including my glass slipper challenge medal and hopped on the bus back to the Contemporary by myself, which was great. I showered and stretched and took a breather and then hit the parks again with Dr. Laura for a minute. This is when I had my most fabulous tuna salad that I mentioned the other day. Yum.

Thoughts on the Princess? It was fun, but there were a lot of walkers. The beauty of this race is that while runners are welcome, interval trainers, walkers and first-timers are more so. It's a great environment to foster camaraderie, there is a "You can do it!" attitude. With that...

The race etiquette says to keep to the right if you are walking but what do you do if there are 25 other walkers around you? There were points we couldn't get over to walk when it came to our walking minute. It was CROWDED. We would bob and weave in between the slower racers and then count off "1, 2, 3" to make sure we didn't lose each other. And we weren't going that fast. Our counting actually worked amazingly well the one time we misplaced Kristen around a fueling station!

Will I do it again? Not likely, not the Princess. It was fun, I am so glad I did it, I am so glad I got to spend the weekend with my friends. It's just one of the races I check off my list. I might consider a smaller Disney race but this princess is OUT. Too many people, too many walkers, too much wasted time (even when we were going slow ourselves!).

The best part about the race was being able to do it with my friends, and well... we can do that anywhere right?