Walt Disney World 10K Recap

Friday morning was the WDW 10K. I was up at 3:15 and out the door by 4:00AM. I didn't really plan costumes for this race weekend, but I had picked up this shirt at the Tinkerbell expo and I was finally going to wear it for the 10K. I might have worn it for the marathon, but it was supposed to be super cold and I knew a short sleeved shirt wasn't going to cut it.

I headed down to the buses and ran into Pinnochio and Geppetto.

I'll admit, I was pretty excited about the marathon, since I have so few pictures of my first marathon and my second marathon was a horrible disaster for many reasons. I was going to soak this one in and enjoy it, which meant taking as many pictures as possible in front of anything that said "marathon" on it.

I'm really glad I did that. This whole weekend was awesome, so I'm glad I have so many pictures to look through.

After taking pictures, I made my way to the corrals. I was in corral D. I don't know how many total corrals there are, but the corral system definitely does not work the same way for the 10K as it does for the half or full. We stood in that corral for what felt like an eternity. They broke the corrals into waves, so even though a corral would start, there was a considerable amount of time before the next corral was released. I'm guessing at least 10 minutes. I'm used to doing the half or full where the corrals are released every few minutes and things move along.

My muscles stiffened up and my back was killing me. It was so weird- I haven't had problems like that for a long time, so I panicked a little at how crappy my body felt.

Finally, FINALLY, our corral moved to the start. I really felt stiff at that point, but still I felt confident that I was going to PR that morning. 

I didn't take any race pictures myself since I was so focused on PRing, but luckily, I had Memory Maker and unlimited access to Photo Pass photos. Otherwise, I'd have no pictures of this race.

What I thought would be an easy, peasy PR turned out to be a real struggle. I had been running at a PR pace for a month and running 5-7 miles at the pace multiple times a week. I thought I'd practically be moseying to the finish line and still get a PR.

Well, nope. It didn't work out like that. I don't really know what the problem was. Maybe it was the fact that my muscles stiffened up in the corrals. Maybe it was having been on my feet for the last few days at the parks and the expo.

Regardless, I struggled. I struggled a lot. But I actually got some decent photos out of the Photo Pass photographers, which is a huge improvement over Marathon Foto, in my opinion.

I pushed harder than I have pushed for a PR at any race I can remember. Every step felt like a struggle and my lungs were burning. In the back of my mind, I knew there was a chance I was screwing things up royally for myself for the marathon on Sunday, but I couldn't give in. 

I ended up with a 20 second PR, beating a time from 2011. I literally sprinted down the finisher chute and when I crossed the finish line, I not only felt like I might throw up any moment from pushing that hard, but I felt disappointed that I didn't have an obvious PR. To me, it felt like the same time since the minutes were the same. 

But after I stopped feeling my pulse in my face and had some snacks, I told myself that a PR is a PR, even if it's only by 20 seconds.

And PRs definitely deserve a cool drink that must shared on Instagram. So that afternoon, my mom and I headed over to Trader Sam's at the Polynesian. 

I had the HippopotoMai-Tai and she had the Zombie. Of course, neither of us would normally order a drink like this. I'm much more of a wine or mimosa girl, but you can't have the glass unless you order the drink, so I put on my big girl panties and ordered one. 

And it was delicious.

From the Polynesian, we headed to the Magic Kingdom for a bit and did some rides. The Christmas tree was still up at MK.

The temperatures were dropping. There was heavy rain in the forecast for the morning of the half and really cold temps for the full, but I wasn't really paying attention to social media regarding whether or not the race would happen. 

I was completely surprised when I got a text from a friend that the half was cancelled. It hadn't even rained at all at that point, so it seemed a little extreme to me at the time. Signs were out at the Boardwalk, I received texts and there was a message on our room phone alerting us that the race had been cancelled. I wasn't even running the half and I was alerted numerous times. 

When I woke up to thunder and torrential rain in the middle of the night and the storms were still going at 7 that morning, I knew Disney had made the right call. It was horrible out. The cool thing was watching so many people run their own half marathon at various hotels where spectators handed out snacks and water and made impromptu character stops. I saw it after the fact on social media, but I wish I had realized what was going on and went out to lend a hand.

My mom and I had breakfast at Be Our Guest. It was still raining a bit and the temperatures were dropping fast. We rode a bunch rides at Magic Kingdom. This guy didn't seem to be bothered a all by the freezing rain. 

Eventually, we made our way to Epcot for an early dinner at Nine Dragons. I justified the amount of food I ate by telling myself that I was carb loading for the marathon in the morning. And trust me, I ate an impressive amount of fried rice and pepper beef. It was delicious.

That night I decided to do a load of laundry and stay off of my feet. After the load was done in the washer, I put my clothes in the drier, except for the Darth Vader shirt I wore for the 10K. I had hung it on the back of a chair while I put the rest of my clothes in the drier. 

The machines lock once they start and don't unlock until the cycle is done. I made it back to the room before I realized I had left my shirt on the chair. Honestly, I didn't even really worry about it. I truly did not think I needed to race back down to get my shirt, I mean, who steals clothes from another person? Especially wet, running clothes?! 

But sure enough, when I went back to get my clothes out of the drier, my shirt was gone. It was still wet, so it's not like someone cold think it was forgotten there. It had just come out of the washer. I was honestly surprised. The Boardwalk is a really nice hotel and runners are typically jerks. The worst part is that you can no longer get that shirt on the Disney Store website. I tried to order one for my mom. 

I'm super sad. I mean, I'm not going to jump off of a building over it, but I saved that shirt for the weekend and I only wore it once. I hope the jerk who took it feels good about his or herself. Grrrrr.

Anyone else run the WDW 10K?