Disney Family Fun Run 5K Recap

I conquered my first runDisney run. The race was the Disney Family Fun Run 5K. It was an experience (in a good way). I am so happy and psyched.

The race day started early, with a 4:00 am wake up call. We wanted to allow enough time to get to the race, park and most importantly find each other before entering the corrals. Our group included myself, Dopey Dave, his friend Elissa and my friend Derek. We had been working on a group costume, but never could decide on a choice, so eventually leading up I made a decision that I wanted to race as Fergus from Brave. If you're not familiar with the movie, that means running in a kilt. For me, this was simple, as I already knew how to pleat a kilt by hand and owned a sporran (the pouch on the front). The main thing it required was a large piece of material in the right color. This lead Dave and Elissa to go as Elenor for Elissa (she picked first) and Dave as Merida. Unfortunately I didn't give Derek enough notice to get in on the fun.

How do we look? Ready to run?

Once we met up, it was priceless. Dave was in full costume of dress and wig. When crossing to the corrals, we were stopped by a photographer to get a picture, and he asked if we minded being used in marketing materials. We said "hell yeah!" From there, we loaded up in to corral E, which was the last corral, as Dave and Derek hadn't submitted times and we wanted to run together. As we waited they had a stage by the starting line with music and mic man and some occasional characters. One by one they sent of the corrals. Before we even started, the elites and A corral were finishing. We were itching to get started.

That's not the time for my 1st mile.

Elissa and Dave run at a faster pace than Derek and I. The plan was to run a slower pace and stay together. It worked well early, due largely to the crowds. With the bunches of people, Derek and I were able to take walk breaks and still keep up when things bunched up. The course started backstage which was cool. While backstage there was even a character stop with Flik and Atta from Bugs Life. At mile one, Derek and I stopped to take a picture with the mile marker sign. Dave and Elissa didn't see us stop and continued on. Luckily we caught up as Dave stopped to take a picture as we ran under Test Track! How awesome was that?!

We entered Epcot back around Mexico. From there we started circling back through the countries. Just in time, we had a water break. It wasn't overly hot but the Florida humidity was starting to kick in. Not bad for Florida, but it was starting up, so the water was a nice blessing. I called it out so the group would know it was all there but just Derek and I needed it. Dave and Elissa pushed on and out ahead of us. Derek and I tried to play catch up, but muscle memory took over and their lead was too much for us so Derek and I stayed together and ran our race, which was nice. We passed some other characters, including Remy and Emile in Frace and Dopey elsewhere as well. We didn't stop for any, as we were still pushing catch up but Dave had a timing requirement for the Dopey challenge. Frankly, the lines were quite long and I didn't feel like waiting anyway, as none were "all time favorites" for me anyway.

My bib and bling.

Since I hadn't started my normal run walk timer, Derek and I kept picking points to run to then take a walk break and pick a new point. Most of our choices were probably putting us close to our 30 / 30 split we use anyway. As we came under Spaceship Earth, out the side and around the bend, we saw the finish line and finished strong. Without any official tracking, my unofficial Nike time was 44:36. I'll take that. We proceeded to get our medals, free Powerade and foods and meet back up with Steph and Claudia. I was so happy to get through my first race. But all I could think about was really my upcoming race on Saturday, with excitement. I was happy to have done a runDisney race, but the half is my real target. Here we come!

How did I celebrate? With a haircut and hot towel shave, of course

Before and after

Remember that photographer I mentioned? The one that asked if we mind marketing? Well, turns out, out picture was a good one. In fact, the one of the three of us above was from them. They used it on their Facebook gallery. In fact, we were having dinner in Italy (in Epcot) and one of Steph's friend texts her to tell her about seeing us on there. That made us happy. Then, we saw the official race recap from runDisney on their blog. Who is that on top? Our scottish clan! That just made my night like you wouldn't believe.

Image credit: rundisney.com