RunDisney

What do you do to celebrate your kids 18th birthday when they are away at college? I went to Disneyland to run a half marathon. This weekend Tyler turned 18, I figured since he would be at BYU Idaho he wouldn't want me to drive up there to celebrate with him, so I decided to celebrate without him. I dislocated my kneecap in January and was in the knee brace until April, so I needed a race to help motivate me to start running again. This seemed to be the perfect race for me. Chris and I decided to go without the kids. We drove down Friday and went to California Adventure. Chris made our first ride be Tower of Terror. Chris likes the ride but I hate it. I don't like to free fall like that. We went on the other rides, walked around the park, walked downtown Disney, and then went back to the hotel. Saturday morning we started our day with breakfast with the characters and then played at Disneyland all day! We had a blast only going on the bigger rides. Everything was decorated for Christmas including the Jungle Cruise ride. It was so much fun! We ended our day by watching Fantasmic and the Fireworks. Then it was off to bed so I could wake up at 4 am to run my 13.1 miles! I Thought I was going to have to walk by myself at 4:30 in the morning to the start of the race at The Disneyland Hotel (about 1.5 miles away), because there was no way Chris was going to get up that early. But then I found out that I got a free shuttle to Disneyland and only had to walk thru the Downtown Disney District. I walked with a bunch of other racers toward the start line, this was the first race that I ran completely by myself. Other racers had either their spouse or a friend to run with. But this race was mostly to show myself that I could run this distance again. While I'm running I have to constantly talk myself into continuing. 13.1 miles is a long time to be with your own thoughts. As long as I was lost in the music the miles seemed to go by fast. As soon as I started thinking, oh man did those miles drag on. The wind was awful strong today too! If I was running into the wind, I had to push so hard, it felt like I wasn't moving at all. If the wind was coming at my side, it was pushing me so hard that I was tripping over my own feet! Then when the wind was coming from behind me pushing me, I was flying. It was crazy! We ran through California Adventure, Disneyland, and Angel's Stadium. Mile 12-13.1 was the hardest because you were running through the back of the park and the hotels and smelling food! I was so hungry I was smelling bacon and eggs, and BBQ pulled pork.there were so many people out cheering us on, including all the local high school cheer leaders and auxiliaries. They were out there ready to give us fives as we ran by. I am proud to say that I ran/jogged the entire 13.1 miles. I didn't really even train for it. The last time I ran more then 2 miles outside was the Ragnar at the end of September. And then my longest leg was 8.4 miles. I haven't run more then 3 miles on a treadmill since September either. I placed 183 out of 1115 in my age group, 824 out of 6,407 women, and 2091 out of a total of 10,449 runners! Not too bad! Overall I'm glad I was able to go and run this fun race! Thank you Chris for supporting me!