Man, I am sucking! I fell asleep again yesterday! I think I am finally winning against the dreaded cold, hopefully that means that I will have a little more vim and vigor!
So, onto the next installment of my birthday week! Saturday, the big race day, we spent at Magic Kingdom. We got a slightly earlier start than on Friday, but still not what most would consider early! At least we didn’t have to run, but I did want to ensure all of our things were ready for the race. The less one has to worry about before a race, the better! It was even hotter, and I tried not to be nervous about the temps and the race and enjoy the park. Once again, we decided to grab food right away, this time going a little more casual with sandwiches. I had already told G he needed to stay hydrated throughout the day. I had to clarify that diet Coke did *not* count as hydrating! So, we all had water with our sandwiches, and G didn’t even complain!
The ‘rents stopped to chat with some cast members about pins, and we headed over to see about fast passes for Space Mountain. Unfortunately, the ride was walled off for renovations!! Bummer! So, instead we hit the rest of the spacey rides in the area. The people mover (which was really weird to ride through the Space Mountain part as if was totally black), the Carousel of Progress, and Stitch’s Great Escape. We hit the Mad Tea Party next. It was a little annoying as right as we got to the front of the line, they “ran out of sugar for the tea.” I found it slightly odd that they couldn’t tell us anything other than that, but we waited patiently. Luckily the wait wasn’t too long, so we rode and moved on. We wanted to ride Peter Pan’s Flight, but the fast passes would have put us on the ride after the race start, and the line was over an hour. I have never been on it, as the line is always ridiculous. So, I have no idea what the draw is. If anyone knows what is so amazing about it, please tell me! I don’t want to wait in line for hours if it’s totally lame. Speaking of Peter Pan, I planned on picking up G a Peter Pan hat while we were at the MK. I’d seen them before, and we’d already seen Peter Pan costumes in many of the shops, so I thought it would be an easy feat. So, every time we passed a shop, I had to pop in and see. Anyhow, we looked at the time, and hedged our bets on what would get us the most enjoyment for our time. We checked the map to see where we could get fast passes, and talked about what rides we all wanted to hit, and what we wanted to do separately. So, we hit Hall of Presidents, since it was closed last time to add the new president (yeah!). I enjoyed the lobby displays of First Lady gowns immensely (as you would probably guess). G and I checked out Splash Mountain and Big Thunder Railroad. Based on the wait times and the fast pass return, we opted to fast pass BTR and come back to wait in line for Splash Mountain. We met up with the ‘rents to ride the Haunted Mansion. I do enjoy this ride, however after riding the Nightmare Before Christmas version at Disneyland last year, I am a little spoiled. I still kinda want it to always be like that! We split up to finish off the day, and agreed we would see each other at the hotel before the race. So, G and I rode Big Thunder Mountain, which was just as fun as I remembered. We figured we didn’t have enough time to wait for and ride Splash Mountain, as the line was longer by then. So we decided to pop in and out of a few more shops for a hat and make our way to the bus to the hotel. No dice on a hat anywhere, Not the end of the world, but again, they had lots of Peter Pan costumes….what were all the boys who purchased them supposed to do for hats???? Alas and alack, we got some water and headed for the hotel.
We were sitting on the bus for a few minutes, when we saw the ‘rents boarding. We thought it was pretty amusing that after we parted ways and did our own things, we still wound up on the same shuttle home. We got back to the hotel and had some snackage, and I had a lie down to prep for the race. G woke me up, a tidge later than I had planned, as he forgot I wanted to shower. I new that I was gonna get gross and sweaty again, but I thought it would be nice to start clean. I put my hair up on top of my head and tried to get my bangs to sweep to one side a bit, though mostly unsuccessfully. I put on the Tink costume, pinning the tops of the wings to keep them more upright. Shoes went on with double ties in the laces so I wouldn’t have to stop and retie them. G got all Peter Panned up, and prepped his fuel belt. We looked at the clock, a bit nervously, but fortunately it was fast, so we realized we were probably okay. We walked over to the shuttle stop, and saw several other runners, so we were sure we were fine. A few minutes later, we saw G’s dad pull up in their car. He just wanted to make sure that we made it for the bus, and was ready to offer us a ride. We told him we were good, and would see them at the race! As we waited, I heard a little girl desperately trying to get her mom’s attention, “Mom! It’s Tinkerbell! MOM! It’s Tinkerbell! MOM! It’s TINKERBELL!” I thought it was pretty cute. She was positive I was really Tink. Not much later, the motor coach pulled in. We boarded with the other runners for the trip over to the starting line. We arrived at Hollywood Studios, and followed the volunteers with their air traffic style flashlights. it was a bit of a trek, but we found the waiting area. As it was a Hollywood themed mystery race, they had a red carpet for the runners to enter on. Up ahead of that were giant Hollywood Tower guest registers for everyone to sign. It would have been fun to sign, but they were already pretty full, not to mention crowded with runners trying to sign. We noticed lots of interesting costumes. First was a gent dressed as the Joker. He had on regular running clothes in purple and green, but with full on Joker make-up. I couldn’t imagine running in that!! We saw some dressed as the Tower of Terror, along with a friend dressed as The Twilight Zone. There were a couple of ladies in Dunder Mifflin rabies 5K tees. Lots of various winged creatures. Some tiaras and crazy hats. Since the race was a mystery race, we saw the first light indicating a clue. We checked it out, and eliminated our first suspect. Some stretching, some water, and eventually we figured it was high time to get in our corral. We decided to get in between the up to 12:59 a mile and the 13:00-15:00 a mile. It was rather tricky getting to the corrals and in, as there were lots of spectators milling about. I thought this was weird as the half didn’t allow spectators in the waiting area or the starting line. It certainly made things more annoying. On our way, we spotted the second clue, and eliminated another suspect. Then, we made our way to the correct corral and waited. A girl dressed as a bumblebee asked to have a photo with me, which I thought was sweet. Finally, there was a spray of fireworks from the starting line, and the 5K started. Within minutes, the elite racers were heading for the finish line! I don’t know that I could ever get that fast, but it’s fun to dream! Then, came our big moment! Another spray of fireworks, and we were off! as expected, it took a while to get spaced enough to do any running. I was peeved that despite the honor system of going to the correct pace, there were still an awful lot of walkers ahead of us that we had to try and get around. Gah! I tried not to be annoyed, but there were corrals for a reason. It was especially hard not to be annoyed when the route was pretty narrow for a while. It was really exciting to hit the first turn, which was a youey (or however you spell that slang word). G seemed to be having a rough start. He was hurting right away, which concerned me. We headed along the path, and I saw the pace carts heading along the path we had turned from. They made me think of death eaters, with their skull lights that flashed to look like they were eating. I told Geoff that whatever he did, never to let his pace hit 18:00 a mile. Just seeing the pick-up carts was troublesome, even though they were pretty far behind us. I saw port-o-johns on the right, and asked G if he wanted to stop. He stopped, went, stretched, and we tried to better synch up our Garmins. We went on with the run, G feeling much better. We took an extra walk break every few runs. We continued to see more clues. The first audio clue was pretty obvious, but wore out quickly. They had speakers for an awfully long stretch of race! It was fun to hit various terrain, sand, track, etc. The only annoyance for me was that there were a lot of people who didn’t seem to follow run/walk etiquette and make sure to take their walk breaks such that they weren’t in the way of those at a faster pace. Again, I tried not to be annoyed, but with a lot of the path being so narrow, it was really hard to get past people in the middle. We pressed on, and the clues were pretty interesting. One we totally missed was a clue, as the cheerleaders weren’t holding up the letter signs that we later found out they were supposed to have…thus at the end, we were pretty confused! There was a rebus puzzle of sorts with a large sketch of a shell, another of a bee, and then two female horses (live ones, eating grass) to spell Shelby Mayer. There was an alphabet puzzle with the missing letter being the suspect to eliminate. In this case the ex. There was a guy in a big furry mascot style costume of a buck playing a green trumpet for Bucky Greenhorn. Dancers on stilts playing a fiddle for Freddy Fiddlesticks….so on and so forth. Pretty amusing. Lots of people along the way really seemed to enjoy the costume. The race started out warmer than I would have liked, but did cool down some along the way, thankfully. It got really exciting when we finally got into the park to run. I find it great fun to run in the parks, especially when the parks aren’t really open! The highlight was running across the set for the stunt show, where they had a cameraman set up to capture us and we saw ourselves on the GIANT HD screen over the set. By this time we were in the homestretch. I told G he could do it! He wound up wanting a few extra walk breaks by that point which I was fine with. Coming through one of the last turns, we saw G’s parents waiting for us. It’s always great to have a cheering section!!! Expecially since we were so close! We made our way around to the Tower of Terror. When we saw the finish line, we grabbed hands and ran as fast as we could. It was so exciting to finish with G. We got our medals, what we were waiting for. We grabbed some Powerade and water, and got a photo of us with our medals, then were off to find the ‘rents. We met up, and G hit the bathroom. Another annoying etiquette thing came into play, as G needed a stall, and had to wait forever to get one, as they were all being used as changing rooms. We felt like they could have either spent the hour in their running gear, or not use a stall. I mean, it’s all adults, and I doubted anyone was getting naked. When you have thousands of people sharing restrooms, it’s nice to be courteous to people who have business. (I am really trying not to be a complainer, but I get annoyed when people don’t have courtesy for others.) When he finally made it back out, we headed to the sorcerer hat to meet up with some peeps from the Disney Spark Team. We didn’t see anyone, so we enjoyed the music for a bit, then tried to see our prelim times. After fifteen minutes, we figured we must have missed the team, so we got some food to refuel. The party only went until two, which did not give the runners much time to enjoy the festivities. We finished up, and the ‘rents decided to go back to the hotel. We couldn’t leave from
doing the Tower of Terror race without riding the Tower of Terror, so we went off to hit the ride, leaving my wings with G’s folks. I got some more compliments on my costume which felt good. We enjoyed the ride as much as usual, considering it’s my favorite Disney ride ever! By the time we got out of the ride, the party was over. So, we headed for the bus. It was definitely a full day, and I was looking forward to getting a nice shower in and some sleep. We got back to the resort and walked through to our building. G pointed out a wee armadillo. We crept over to it in time to see him sneak into the bushes. We could see the bushes moving as he ate some branches. We waited very quietly, and he came waddling out. He was cute in a weird way. I kind of wanted to touch him, but I had no idea if they were mean or not. So, I let him waddle back to the bushes. We made it back to our room showered and hit the hay after our adventuresome day, and to get some rest before we had to continue my birthday.
More tomorrow in which we find out how you can get thrown out of Disney World! Hint: It is not how you would think.