{Run Disney} Neverland 5K

This past Summer, I got this wild idea that I should sign up to run a 5K at Disneyland. It sounded like a good idea at time time. I had months to prepare, right? Plus, it would be great motivator to get out and run. Well, in October I hurt my hip flexor and then it got kind of cold and then the holidays hit and well, I sort of lost all motivation to run. Then all of a sudden January was here and I was in a panic that I might not even be able to FINISH the race on time! They have a 16 minute mile pace requirement. The weekend before the race, we went to Cuyamaca track and timed the race, and I did it with 8 minutes to spare. Phew!

So Friday after Lauren's therapy, we headed to Temecula to drop Lauren off with my mom. Then we continued on in to Anaheim to pick up my race packet. When we arrived at the race packet pick up area, I kid you not, there were 400 pound plus people picking up race packets! There is NO WAY they were going to keep a 16 minute mile pace. Turns out, there is not pace requirement and it takes some people over 2 hours to complete the course. Anyways, after we picked up my stuff we headed over to Lori and Dave's for the night and had chicken, steak and asparagus for dinner. It was delicious.

At 3am, we got up and headed over to Disneyland for my race.

The race started inside the park, right infront of the castle.


I was fairly close to the start line. The line wrapped all the way down main street.

We ran past Its a Small World, Behind Disneyland where the train runs, back in through Toontown, past Tom Sawyers Island, past Pirates of the Carribean, past Haunted Mansion and Splash Mountain and then behind the scenes to the front of the parks. We entered California Adventure near Carsland and wound all through there before crossing over the Paradise Pier to the finish line.



As it turns out, I finished easily in the top 250 out of 4,000+ runners, so I was super pround of myself! They did not actually time or count us, so Justin was just guessing. He thought that about 100 people crossed before me, so saying top 250 is a generous allottment.


I sort of cried a little bit when I crossed the fisnish line. Losing 75 pounds has been an emotional journey and the last mile of that run really kicked my butt. I wanted to stop and walk and really pushed myself to keep running and just kept reminding myself how far I had come and how I could not stop now...


The sun was just coming up as we were leaving. I got a nice little finishers medal and a snack pack with a bunch of gluten filled snacks that I could not eat in it.


We headed to the parking lot to get in the car and then we went over to Mimis for breakfast. We got there just as they were opening and missed a HUGE rush! We went back to Lori and Dave's and slept for a little while and then got ready to go to Casey's Baby Shower.