Main impressions

I’ll happily do it again, no questions!

Highlights: the course, the park, the size!

Lowlights: ramping up to a 108 degree day, my time, my knee post-race, the size!

The Race

The first five miles looked about like the picture to the left…

For those of you who don’t get the reference, here it is another way: I passed 7,136 people while running, the majority of these in my first 5 miles. What this means is that my time was horrible (for me), to say the least. I felt like I was running intervals for those first miles, and yet, it was a whole lot of fun! The nature of the run kept Harry and I together for that time, because even if I’d wanted to go faster, I couldn’t. Sometimes he’d find a path through the people, and I’d sprint to grab it before it disappeared, sometimes I did. That in itself was a fun new scenario.

The day was about as awful as possible, Anaheim was the second hottest city in CA that day, at 108 degrees. The low during the night was mid-70s, putting our race in the 80s and 90s, with >50% humidity. Less than pleasant.

The Route

Fireworks went off at the starting line with the gun, which in itself was pretty neat. Then down the outside of the park along the streets, followed by a path through the employee areas into the back of California Adventure. Through CA Adventure, seeing characters there, and employees rooting you on. Then off to the main park, my favorite moment of which was when a character in the Mad Hatter costume is yelling “faster, faster!” in a great Hatter voice, while the teacups are spinning and the music is going behind him. Running through the castle, then back out to the streets.

Several of the rides were turned on, solely for our enjoyment. Then off across the freeway, through boring streets, marching bands playing along, high school cheerleader squads along the route, and lots and lots of water stations. Then through the inside of Angel’s Stadium and around the baseball field, then finally a return back to downtown Disney. The race logistics were solid, the support structure was great; 1900 volunteers and they were still short.

The Results

1:59:34 (9:07 min/mi, blech!), 1030 overall, 77th age group. Not good for me, but considering, I’m not too worried about it. I almost feel like it was more fun passing all the people, even with the time hit, just to say I passed over 7000 people! 🙂 Save the PR for another course, and another day. I had a great time, and a great vacation.