Walt Disney World Half Marathon Day

Today I was doing the first part of the Goofy Challenge.  I did this challenge last year with my sister and didn't really expect to be doing it again. I knew I was going to do the marathon again but then I also wanted to run with a friend who would be doing his first Disney race, so that meant tacking on the half marathon as well. Turns out  that a few months after registration, my friend decided not run. It looked like I would be doing the half by myself (with 21,000 other runners).  But as luck would have it, I found out a few weeks before that my very good racing Buddy Doug would be at Disney and we would be running the half together.  Wow, this is working out already!

I ran with Doug during Rock n Roll VA Beach previously (or at least tried too).   It was hot and I was struggling, so I fell behind and told him to keep going.  This time I was determined to keep up!

I ran as Jasmine and if we had a little more time
we probably could have created an Aladdin outfit for him too! I think he would have been a good sport and wore it! Maybe next time?

The weather this year was just the opposite of last year's half marathon. Last year we wore long sleeves and still kept our throw away jackets the entire race. This year it was so hot and humid.  The race itself was pretty uneventful and it went by pretty quickly. 

I didn't carry my own water for the half because this race does a good job with having enough water stops. We did stop for one bathroom break but seemed to be able to pick of the pace immediately after.

We are "borrowing" this image from Marathonfoto.

Running through the castle is always the highlight of any Run Disney race that goes through Magic Kingdom!

Another photo we are "borrowing" from Marathonfoto.

Before we knew it we were both headed for the finish line! 

We must have done fairly well because my friend Doug won an award for placing in the Run Disney RD Challenge!

Here is a close up of the trophy. It is Donald Duck because of course the race is called "Donald's Half Marathon".

Have you ever seen a Donald Duck Trophy like this? Pretty cool huh?

Please note that post race massages are available at the end of the race in the family reunion area but they just happened to be offered in the post race tent that we were invited to so we got them there.

After grabbing a bite to eat and getting a post race massage for me and a pre-race massage for my sister, we had fun watching the other runners come in. We had a few friends we were hoping to see cross the finish line!

I think we stayed till close to the end cheering on runners!

We did meet up with our friend Heather after her third race this weekend. That's right, she was doing the Dopey Challenge.

We than met up with this "Goofy" bunch, Todd and Jennifer! They were of course doing the Goofy Challenge.  Jenn blogs at The Final Forty.  We were excited to finally meet her and Todd as we have been to several of the same race weekend (at Disney and non Disney races), and have always seemed to miss each other.


                                       We are linking up with Tuesdays on The Run.