The Happiest Race on Earth

Well, for all those who are wondering....I DID IT! I did one of the most painful, hot, tiring, exciting, fun thing that i've ever done. This labor day I ran in the disneyland half marathon...nicknamed the happiest race on earth.
Thats 13.1 miles around the disney parks and Anaheim. The roads were closing down at 4am so I felt it easiest to get a hotel to stay in. I used priceline because we are poor and we ended up in the most amazing, fancy Hyatt Regency. Pretty close to the nicest hotel i'd ever stayed in in my life! We did a little bit of swimming but I had to get to bed early because I had to wake up at 3 am to catch a shuttle to downtown disney. Rob took these before pictures of me. The second was much more accurate to how I felt at that time.
I got to downtown disney at 3:45 in the morning and already I was feeling hot. Unfortunately, at this time we were in the middle of a heat way. At this time it was already in the 70's and during the race it had already reached the 90's. At the beginning of the race the issued a red flat warning. This means that heat stroke is very possible and the cautioned anyone who has problems in the heat to not run. The only thing higher than a red flag warning is a black flag warning and with this, they would unoffically cancel the race...meaning that people could run at their own choice, but they would not be timed and there would not be medals. I was very glad that it didn't come to this.

The race was VERY fun...well...if you can call running fun! There for 14,000 people register in this race so it was very crowded. They did a little count down to the beginning of the race and then there were fireworks all around us. Here is a picture that I found of the starting point. I'm sure i'm in there somewhere!
I wish I would have had a camera during the race. We had a great cheering squad all around the disney parks. This included....mickey, minnie, goofy, daisy, donald, mr. incredible, sully, alice, frozone, flik, jasmine, stitch and many more that I can't think of. Lots of people were stopping all the route to get their pictures taken with these characters. We had great cheering sections all along the way. Disney had set up entertainment along the course. Their were hawaiian dancers, mexican dancers, tons of cheerleaders and outside dodger stadium there were tons of boyscouts. This was really fun because our name was on our race bib so everyone I went people were cheering me on by name and telling me how good I was doing. It made it a lot easier to keep going! When we were out of the parks (we ran through both California adventure and disneyland) we ran the scenic route of historic anaheim, ran by honda stadium (where the mighty ducks play) and ran on the field of the Anaheim angels stadium.This is towards the end when my ankle was really hurting...this picture accurately represents the pain and tiredness on my face!!We had just finished going through all of the boy scouts so I was sprinting down the edge giving high fives! I was very tired. :) In this picture it shows the point when the camera is on us and we are being shown up on the big screen inside the stadium. I was watching myself on the big screen at this time.
That was pretty cool! This was really fun, but I sure was happy to leave angels stadium and soon see a sign of disney way...that meant I was almost done! I had hurt my ankle prior to running the race so the last 3 miles were VERY painful. All in all, I finished! Can you find me? The time on the board isn't my chip time. That is time time from the beginning of the race and my corral started almost 15 minutes later. I came in at a exciting 3:00:52. My goal was three hours so I felt pretty good about that. Now all you smart people with a calculator, please don't go pulling it out and doing the math to realize that I did a pathetic 13ish minute average per mile!
I made my goal so thats what mattered most to me. I came in 7126th place out of 14000 so I was pretty excited about that. I was very pleased with how I did because I ran almost the whole thing. I had to walk more toward the end because of my hurt ankle but I did my best. One of the best parts...I got this really cool medal for finishing!
At the end of the race I was quite greatful for all I could eat orange slices, bagels and powerade. I was so tired and very hungry! This is also when they took our after picture. I was just shocked to have finished!After finishing I called both Rob and my mom up and told them that I didn't finish the race. I told them that I passed out in mile 4 and i've been with medical ever since. They both believed me and sure tried to make me feel good about not finishing! Ahhhh the fun of if all! When I got back, showered and cleaned, Rob took my after picture in my I did it shirt!
The rest of our day was painfully spent at disneyland. Rob joked that he could tell exactly who ran the marathon by who was limping around the park. And believe me... I was limping around the park....and for the next 3 days that followed!