Disney Princess 2015

I finished the half marathon without injury or issue. The first 5
miles I kept up a pace around 14:30-15:00 by walking and jogging
intervals.

Then I hit the Magic Kingdom and my pace went south. I stopped to take
a couple selfies and text people and then there was a bottle neck as
we went through the castle.

At mile 7 I was only 45 sec ahead of pace (16 min mile is pace to
finish to avoid being swept). At that point in the course, we are
mostly down to one lane highways or paths and it is shoulder to
shoulder the rest of the race. So my pace kept getting worse and
worse.

I was already getting tired. Add to that having to constantly dodge
slower people to keep moving through open spots, and I got slower and
more frustrated and tired. I dodged so much my final distance was
around 13.6 miles (forgot to stop my watch at the end so got some
extra steps that didn't count after I crossed the finish line).

I ended up walking a lot more in the last half, which I expected since
I didn't train. But what I didn't expect was to get caught by the
Balloon Ladies after mile 10! These are the pacers that if you fall
too far behind, you get pulled from the course and put on a bus and
aren't allowed to finish. (Two of our group got pulled at mile 8--one
is very overweight, has health issues and didn't train and expected
not to finish, the other is 69 years old--they were together the whole
race.)

Since I started in the last corral, I had no time cushion. If you
start in an earlier corral you can maintain a slower pace and still
finish. I caught up to one of my friends (this was her first half)
soon after the balloon ladies caught me (she was several corrals ahead
of me at the start) and we encouraged each other to keep going.

Sometimes the balloons were behind us and sometimes in front, but we
always kept them in sight and close by. We would jog when we had to.
It was really crowded and the sun was up and it was in the 70s. So the
last few miles of the race sucked.

But we finished together.

Here we all are. The lady in the middle is Queen Mom, mother the the
last girl on the right. The girl next to me is who I finished with and
was her first race (she did train, but her problem was she didn't wear
her leggings and her legs seriously chafed so she was in pain the
whole race--very sad rookie mistake.) The two on the right are sisters
in law (girl in pink married to girl in black's brother).

Girl in pink has lost 117 pounds in the past 14 months. She came with
me to OA when all else failed her. She's my best friend. She has done
6 half marathons. This was her PR. She finished in 3 hrs 10 min.

Way better than me. My net time was 3:35:53. But I'm just happy I
finished with no injuries.

I had a great time at the parks and with the girls. There were three
other girls on the trip other than those here (but I don't have a pic
with all of us and I'm not close to them).

This is my last time to do this race. It's expensive. I don't like
being away from Mark and the kids that long (5 days). I'm not training
like I need to. I've done it 3 times. I don't feel the need to keep
doing this experience over and over. The other girls are planning to
keep on with it. The SILs are going to California (with their
families) in the fall to run the Disney half so they can get the Coast
to Coast medal. But they both have husbands who make a lot of money
(they own a well established family business together) and neither of
them work outside the home, so they can justify it.

Anyway....Mark and the kids survived while I was away. There were
hiccups. Sophie joked that "dad tries so hard." He only messed up
minor things and the kids are pretty forgiving. And he did all the
laundry and cleaned the house while I was gone. I couldn't ask for
more. (The other girls came home and complained they had mountains of
laundry to do!)

So that's the report. I got home yesterday at 2:30am (late flight out
of Orlando, drove home from Nashville) and got 3 hours sleep before
going to work. I slept hard last night for 8 hours but am still tired.
Hoping to catch up more tonight.