Outside My Comfort Zone!

Ok, so I meant to write this post a week ago, but it has been crazy here. I feel like I say that all the time and it's the truth but you would think I would learn or something. I can't decide if it's a good thing for life to be crazy because that means I'm getting to experience a lot of great things or if it's a bad thing...I mean I feel like I've either been sick or on the verge of sick for the last two weeks. Hmmmm. I guess it's probably a little of both. My goal though for the future is to start saying NO more so I can have a little more balance of crazy and not crazy.

Anyway, what was this post about again? Oh yeah, my comfort zone. I hate running. Yep, pretty much my least favorite thing to do. I hate WOD's with running, I hate running in general but this past spring I got the bright idea to sign up for another Half Marathon. I know, I'm crazy. Stay with me though...this half marathon wasn't just any half marathon. This one was the Disney Wine and Dine Half Marathon in Disneyworld! Details....November run (nice weather), Night run (no getting up at the butt crack of dawn), Costumes are encouraged, and it's at the Happiest Place on Earth! Ok no brainer, if there was ever a half to do, this was it! So my friend Courtney and I (you can find her over at The Sassy Apron) signed up and convinced two of her good college friends to do it with us. Neal's parents helped us out with some Disney Vacation Club Points to secure a room at Saratoga Springs and we were set! Since my birthday is November 3rd, I justified the trip by calling it a birthday present even though it was the weekend after. Makes sense to me, plus I got to wear an awesome "Happy Birthday" button all over Disney for three days. Score!

Some of ya'll I'm sure are thinking "Ok genius, now you signed up, now you have to start running to train" right? Wrong! Haha! Ok I don't really recommend this approach for everybody but I have been touting the greatness of CrossFit for what 4 years now? And it's true. I didn't do any extra running to train for this Half other than what I was doing at CrossFit. So would some extra training have helped. Probably, but I don't think it would have been necessary to do more than one extra run per week really just to get your legs used to the distance.

So back to the trip. We arrived at Disney on Thursday morning. Our hotel room wasn't ready (obviously) but the great thing about Disney is that the service is amazing. So we got to drop off all our stuff and then headed to Downtown Disney for lunch. We bought two-day park hopper passes and wanted to save them for Friday and Saturday so it was just free stuff on the agenda Thursday. Downtown Disney was followed by a trip to the Outlet mall to check out the lululemon outlet (one of only two in the country I believe...lucky us!) and then back to the hotel to settle into our rooms. Dinner was at an Irish Pub in Downtown, beer flights and Irish dancing included! 

Friday we spent all day running around Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. We had reservations that night at one of my favorite Disney Restaraunts, the Hollywood Brown Derby and we got to see the Osbourne Family Festival of Dancing Lights. Saturday we got up early and went to the Expo. I love Expo's! My wallet, however, does not. I managed to get away with just a few fun purchases (including a $5 light up, flashing jelly ring! Best money every spent) We rounded up that morning at Animal Kingdom then headed back to the hotel to take a nap...and watch the Aggie football game. I am not an Aggie but I was staying with 3 of them so this was a mandatory part of the weekend.

After the game, we all got into our respective Princess Costumes...oh yeah did I mention we were all dressing up as Disney Princesses?? Tutu's obviously were required and I have to say, we had some of the best costumes in the whole race. I definitely found myself wondering who would sign up for a race at Disney and NOT dress up?? Boring people, that's who! Glad that wasn't us...anyway, huge success with the costumes.

The race started with fireworks! And we were off in Corral B for 13.1 miles of fun! We started at the ESPN Wide World of Sports and ran first to Animal Kingdom. Got an amazing shot with Goofy at mile 2. Now don't be fooled. We were not running this race for a PR and had all intentions of stopping at every Disney character we could for photos. We met Rafiki at Animal Kingdom with Dana getting the best photo of the night! And raced our way from there to Hollywood Studios.
We got to run through the Osbourne lights at Hollywood studios. This is definitely the part where my legs started to cry! haha! And after Hollywood Studios, we raced to the finish at Epcot. After the race, we got to spend the next few hours walking around Epcot at the Food and Wine Festival. Best after-party ever! Although I was pretty tired. We got potstickers in China, Beer in Germany, and Ravioli in Italy. By then it was 3:30am and we were done. We managed to crawl our way back to the bus and hit the bed right around 5am!

Not gonna lie, my legs were screamin' especially my knees. Took me seriously a week to recover...ok maybe just 3 days but still! I think that's the main difference between not running at all pre-race and running, the recovery time. It was definitely an experience though and one that I might just do again sometime. I think I've come to realize that I like Half's when they are in cool places with cool things to do. The next one on my list will probably be the lululemon Seawheeze in Vancouver....maybe not till 2014 though. Let's not get too crazy with this whole running thing! :)