Last weekend was the Wine and Dine at Disney. My sister and I were really looking forward to this race for quite some time. Unfortunately the year that we signed up for, it changed to a morning race because they added a 10k the day before the half marathon. I chose to run this because I was already going to be there for the half marathon.
The morning of the 10k came way too early. I woke up and I was out the door before 4 am to catch the bus to the start of the race. I thought I arrived way early. Even with the porta potty line wait, I still had a good 45 minutes waiting in my corral before the start. I promised my sister I would stay with her the following day during the half marathon, so I really wanted to push myself on this 10K. I was fortunate enough to place in the Tinkerbell 10K the year when I ran that, but I had to keep reminding myself that this is a much bigger race than Disneyland so we will see.
The National Anthem was sung, and soon we were off. I was keeping a pretty good pace right from the start, but knew I didn’t want to push myself too much right away. There was this one lady that looked close to my age that was running a good pace. I told myself to just keep running right beside her but do not pass her yet.
While I was running I kept thinking, how boring this course was. The first three miles was all on the highway before we entered the back lot of Epcot. By this time, I had passed that lady and I thought maybe I was going too fast, but I felt good so I was going to try to just keep it up. Once arriving into the park there were some characters to see and a lot of cast members cheering you on so that helped with the boredom. I knew I was close when I was running around the Epcot ball because the finish line was the same for Marathon and Princes, so I picked up the pace and gave it all I had and crossed the finish line.
After crossing the finish line, I looked at my watch and saw a new PR. But was my time enough to place?
ILater that morning my sister suggested I look up my results. I pulled it up, and I didn’t believe it! My sister said you placed 1st in your age group! I kept saying no there has to be an error, she says no look it says division 1 that means in your age group. Needless to say I was thrilled! I ended up being 1st in my age group, and 16 overall female.
I was very happy with my win for the 10K for the Inaugural Lumiere’s Challenge but I have to say I have no desire to do it again. It was a very boring course, and those Disney Races start way too early. -L
We are linking up with the gals from TOTR.