Star Wars! Disney! Running! YEAH!
I grew up a pretty big Star Wars fan so I’ve been wanting to do the runDisney Star Wars races since they first became a thing a couple years ago, but this was the first one to actually worked out for me. And, of course, I’m going to do the “challenge” if the have it! Besides, a 10k and half marathon on back-to-back days isn’t outside of the how I run on a normal weekend.
Pre-race stuff
If you recall my state of running post from last week, things haven’t exactly been great for me in the running department. In in the eight days before the weekend, I only had done a 3.5-miler and a 4-miler because of my hip. And I knew going into the weekend my hip was going to be questionable. The plan with my physical therapist was to do the race, but be willing to take a DNF if the pain got worse than a 5 out of 10.
Because we just did our annual week-long trip for Marathon Weekend in January and were also in Disney in October, we decided to just make it a quick weekend trip and stay at a value resort—Pop Century. We flew down Friday morning and came back Monday afternoon. Using points for our flights, the refund gift cards from the canceled Disney Half Marathon in January, and only doing a few days, the entire trip cost us less than $600 out of pocket for hotel, flight, food, and race fees.
When we got down on Friday, we hopped right on a bus for the expo without wasting any time. To our surprise, the expo was empty. We’re used to it being a zoo, but we walked right in and got our bibs and shirts without waiting. We also were able to walk right into the official merchandise section, though, we didn’t buy anything. Even though the expo was pretty empty and not stressful at all, we didn’t stay long before going back to the resort and dropping our stuff off. We had Chefs de France for dinner in Epcot and eventually got back to the room to go to bed by 10:15. Much later than I normally go to bed for runDisney races, but I was less concerned about sleep for a 10k / half marathon challenge than I am when there’s also a 5k and marathon on top of that.
The 10k
I hopped rolled out of bed at 3:25am and quickly threw my pre-laid out running clothes on. Having overeaten at dinner the night before, I wasn’t too thrilled with how my stomach was looking in just a sports bra, but it was humid and I wasn’t in the mood to be messing around with no shirt.
The bus ride over was short and was at starting area, outside of Magic Kingdom, in no time and the security checkpoint was a breeze. The lines for photos with members of the Dark Side were ridiculously long so I didn’t even think about it. Unfortunately, I had trouble finding any of my friends that I was hoping to see so I yanked my shirt off, checked my bag, and walked over to the corral. It was really nice having the start and staging areas be together, without the 20 minute walk between the two like there is for Marathon Weekend.
I found a porta potty line that only had a few people in it and when I came out, my friend Alison was right there. We talked for like 30 seconds before I got a tweet from my friend Jeff saying they were closing the A corral. As soon as I saw that, I took off sprinting to the corral while yelling back to Alison to have a good race. I got into the corral with time to spare and then ended up meeting up with Patrick and Karen. Patrick and Karen were Garth Vader and Obi-Wayne Kenobi for an amazing Wayne’s World / Star Wars mashup. They both ran in wigs and jeans. Not jean shorts, jeans. Not running pants that looked like jeans, jeans. A hilariously bad idea.
The pre-start stuff included some old Star Wars trailers, as well as the trailer for The Last Jedi. And, of course, the usual antics of Carissa and Rudy. And then the stormtroopers rolled in to remind us that Captain Phasma would be watching us and send us on our way.
I wanted to start off conservatively and being with Patrick and Karen—who were, again, in friggin’ jeans—helped with that. It seemed like they immediately regretted those jeans. Though, they are the kinds of people who stop at every photo stop in Disney, so I ended up ditching them at the first stop.
I was worried about my hip so I wanted to try to take it as easy as possible. My first mile was a 9:20, right about where I should have been. And then I hit my first photo stop in mile two. Overall, I hit about half of the photo stops through the race. For the most part, the lines weren’t ridiculous, but most weren’t super short either.
My hip felt okay for the first couple of miles, but started to hurt after that. The pain level was getting to around a 3 or 4, maybe, but when I’d stop and wait for a photo, it’d stop hurting and feel fine for a couple minutes after I started running.
It was a little more than half the race before we finally got into a park, which might be why I don’t really remember enough of the first half of the race to actually write anything interesting here. It’s like my brain just stopped recording for a while.
A little past the 5k mark, we rounded into Hollywood Studios and ran by Fantasmic and Tower of Terror and then down Sunset and Hollywood Boulevards. I stopped for some stormtrooper photos because obviously. From here, we continued down the same way the marathon does and followed along the water to Crescent Lake, past Beach and Yacht Club to Epcot. I’m not sure what happened on the boardwalk, but I passed a woman who was on her hands and knees and being helped up by two men. She seemed real slow to get up and looked like she might have tripped pretty hard. That boardwalk area can always be a little treacherous. It’s slippery if it’s wet and the boards are easy to trip over.
Right before turned into the service entrance to the World Showcase, I stopped for a photo with Chewie. He was quite sweaty. Not his sweat. He was putting his arm around sweaty ass runners and it was a serious yuck situation.
Coming through the UK and Canada and then into Futureworld, I wanted the race to be over. It was just 10k, but I was worried about my hip for the half. It was still under my pain cutoff, but it wasn’t feeling good and it wasn’t promising for the half.
As I approached the finish line, there were stormtroopers on either side and I went for a high-five with the one on the left. I got nothing. Nothing at all. I hung my head in shame as I finished.
After the race, my hip felt pretty much fine. I waited for photos with Kylo Ren and Captain Phasma and ended up seeing Jeff in line for Kylo Ren before I hopped back on a bus to the resort.
I had a lot of fun with the 10k and couldn’t wait for more fun with the half. That recap is coming tomorrow!
