Pretty Princess?

I love almost all things Disney.....alas the Princess Race was not one of them.....

  The craziness began when I went to the expo to pick up my bib and shirt.  Now this may not look as bad as it was, but it was AWFUL!  I take that back it took about 2 seconds to pick up my bib, the rest was crazy.  There were So Many People.  I couldn't even walk up and down the aisles :(  But the worst was getting the t-shirt 45 min for them to hand me a bag with a shirt, really??

 

This craziness came about when I (stupidly) decided I needed to go back to the expo because I wanted to do the early sign up for Wine and Dine.  I waited for 15 min for the bus and said screw it.

Before they "released the hounds."

 This was the best part of the race!  I got there about 4:15am (they wanted you in corrals by 5am).  Since I walked from the Key West Resort I was the ONLY one out there besides the volunteers, it was amazing!  In just a few short minutes that whole road would become wall to wall people.

My corral start!

Finally! The start of my corral, I had a decent time from Tink so I got moved up from Corral H to D :)  They sent up fireworks with every corral that started and the fairy god mother said some happy little chant that probably translated to "Even though this race is horribly overcrowded and humid as hell you will spend more money when you get to the end and buy a t-shirt."

So I really don't have many pics from the race, to be honest after mile 3 of running around people, running in the grass, and thinking I was going to die I was so hot, stopping seemed like a bad idea.  Sure, sure, there were characters out and one very entertaining man on an overpass dancing, but the lines were so long I wouldn't have stopped even if they had free booze!  The race imo was just badly planned.  Fine you want a million people in the race on the 5th anniversary, and of course the Mouse makes more the more people in the race.  I understand this I do, it's all about $$ so fine, keep the numbers high but instead of having many places were we were running on the road in only one lane keep both of them open!  I felt there were a lot of small things that could have been done to make this way better. 

 So I managed to finish, which in my book is where things went way south!  My friends from New Mexico surprised me by coming down to watch and meet me at the finish, which is where I "turned into a Gremlin."  This would probably be accurate.  I had told them it should only take them about 45-1hr to get to the finish line from the hotel...boy was I wrong!  It took them about 2 hours to my dismay (and theirs) to get to the finish line.  This would haven't been so bad except I had NO Diet Coke and no money with which to buy said Diet Coke.  This is where I turned into a Gremlin.  For those of you who know me, know I don't function well without Diet Coke.  Did I mention I had just run 13.1 miles and was hot as well?  So long story short I finally got to them by jumping a fence because Disney's lack of planning also included funnelling all the runners and some of the friends and family (the ones that made it back that far) through a little narrow lane...Awesome....

So this picture is about 2 1/2 hrs after the race, after I had traipsed over to the Polynesian to get a yummy breakfast that they said there was "no wait for" and when I got there there was 1 1/2 hr wait.  At which point I let out a nice for letter word and went to the fast food area. 

To be honest if this had been the first Disney race I would have done I would NEVER do another one.  It was crazy crowded, badly organized, oh and did I mention humid?  Ok well I will give Disney that one it's not their fault it was humid.

At any rate I finished, and in a better time than I did at Tink, thanks I think to my new Brooks!  Plus I got my coast to coast medal as well :)