Sometime in early January 2012, my Shandra and I decided that we were going to run Disney's Tower of Terror 10 Miler. In my defense, I think the hustle and bustle of post-holidays business and my mom's cancer diagnosis, I completely wasn't thinking about this race at all for the first half of the year. It stayed in the back of my mind, and somehow I was thinking "oh yeah, I've got that 10K in the fall." Well, therein lies the problem....there's a difference between a 10K (6 miles) and 10 Miler. Duh, I know that, but I kept calling the race the Tower of Terror 10K. And low and behold, just about a month before the race, I was like "what? this is 10 miles long, oh that's not going to be pretty at all!!".
We went and made the best of it.
Shaundra decorated these awesome shirts for us to wear. It was me, her and a friend of her's Christine. We all matched and got multiple complements because the lettering and the Mickey glowed in the dark. Pretty sweet for a night race!!
My crazy work/school schedule kept me from joining up with Shandra to go to the race expo, so I recruited a couple of the kids to come with me.
Megan didn't want to come, she was busy trying rewrite Harry Potter with better illustrations. Silly girl!
Oops, this one got out of order. This is Joshua at Disney's Wide World of Sports where the Atlanta Braves do their spring training. It also happens to be where Disney tries to hold all the running expos and race packet pickups.
Back to what I was doing Friday and couldn't go play with my friends....I had to attend a lactation class at the hospital as part of my requirement for working in Labor and Delivery. It was a fun, fluffy class for me, since I already have a bit of a background in lactation. Overall, the material was great - very evidence based, but the class dragged on and I was ready to go!!
Class got out and I raced home to grab the boys and get out the door.
Daniel and Joshua checking out the craziness at the Health and Wellness Expo.
Look who is all smiles near the Space Coast Marathon booth. The Space Coast will likely be my next half marathon, if I can manage to fit proper training into my crazy schedule.
The Space Coast people gave out moon pies and the boys found a quiet spot to eat their moon pies and yogurt while I signed my race paperwork for the TOT.
After picking up everything from the expo, the boys wanted to look around, so we checked out a little bit of some baseball practice.
And then home, so I could fuel up for the run.
I picked Shandra up and drove out to Hollywood Studios around 6pm since this was an evening race.
We met up with Christine and twisted together some glow stick headbands so we could keep track of each other when it gets dark.
Oops, had to sneak another one in of my cutie pies!!
My race bib was on, and I was ready to go!!
In no time at all the weather went from cool and breezy with a small afternoon shower to thick, thick humidity.
Despite the amount of moisture in the air, the fireworks went off and we were all set free to run!!
Finally crossing the starting line! I did not wear a GPS, since I just wanted to have a good time, but I'm guessing leading up to this area, I probably already walked a mile between parking and the crowded/long race staging area.
It was a fun experience to check out the behind the scenes stuff at Hollywood Studios. I got to run through the Lights, Motors, Action stadium and that was pretty cool. But the humidity was rough and the race was packed, people were getting sick all over the place. I was trying to drink water only at every water station, since Disney uses Powerade products and Powerade is not a safe gluten-free food, it is not one of my top choices to drink during a taxing run.
We did not stay for the post-race party, although it looked like it was rocking. We were exhausted and the air just felt heavy.
At least the dust bunnies taking over my house have a sense of humor!
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