Disney World Half Marathon

I thought I'd post about the half marathon first.  Devin and I signed up for this race a year ago.  We felt pretty lucky that the week that my family picked just happened to be marathon weekend at Disney World.  It was nice to have a race to have to train for in the winter.  Normally I'm done racing for the year in October.  Nothing like a race right after the holidays to keep you focused on running more than holiday goodies.
Even though the weather report said it would be cold we kept telling ourselves, "But this is Florida, it will be warmer than Utah.  It will be a nice warm run."  Well, I should have listened to my aunt Wendy who told my mom that it was going to be freezing.  I didn't even bring my running pants, oh how I wish I would have.  Devin and I both layered our clothes as much as we thought possible.  I had 3 shirts on plus my hoodie, my ear warmer and a hat, and gloves.

We kept thinking warm thoughts.  All the racers looked more like they were getting ready to go sledding.

Even though we were turning into popsicles it was tons of fun.  I love the energy that builds before the start of a race.  Unfortunately before the race started, the wind really started blowing.  Luckily we found some big garbage bags that helped to break the wind a bit.

We woke up at 3am so by the time our wave of the race started at 6am we were more than ready to start running.  The wind and the light rain wasn't bad, but when it started sleeting...well that wasn't my most favorite part of the race.
Thank heavens the sleet and the rain went away for a while and we enjoyed a wonderful run to the Magic Kingdom.

It was a blast running down Main Street USA, around the castle, through Tomorrow Land, back through Fantasy land and on to Frontier Land.  There were characters lining the streets and so many people cheering us on.  We were glad that they had given us a little disposable camera so we could stop and take a few fun pictures along the way.  (Funny trying to take pictures with a "film" camera where you have to look through that little hole to take the picture and you can't see what the picture looks like until you get it developed....so prehistoric!)
Our race then took us back the Epcot.  It started raining pretty good and by the time we crossed the finish line we were soaked!  (Splashing through puddles had nothing to do with that I promise.)

It was my worst half marathon time ever, but Devin set a personal record.  We both went into the race with three goals in mind. 1. Not to freeze to death.  2. To finish the race. 3. To have fun.  Three checks! We did not freeze.  We both finished.  We actually ran the whole race together and crossed the finish line hand in hand.  (That has NEVER happened before!) And we had tons of fun.  I'd run this race again in a heartbeat.  Maybe next time we run it, it will be warm.