Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler Race Recap, Part Two

Part two: in which I actually, you know, run the race.  And other stuff.

Okay, before I start, I have to ‘fess up:

I had pretty good intentions of taking a bunch of photos this time.  That didn’t happen.  I'll post what I got and add some from runDisney where applicable, but if you want a better visual trip through 10 miles of “terror”, check out runDisney’s Facebook album.

Also, this is going to get long.  Very long.  Because I'm going to make up for the lack of actual photos by painting a visual with words.  Or something. 

Still with me?  Okay, here we go…

Nancy, Peter and I grabbed a light dinner at the Caribbean Beach Resort’s (CBR) food court around 6:30pm and hopped a bus to the race shortly after 7pm. 

(For those, like I, who stress about how the whole race bus system works, note that the race buses were fancy Mears-type coaches, not regular WDW buses. The race buses had signs in their front windows denoting them as race transportation, and at CBR, those buses went around to each of the regular resort bus stops.  This is not necessarily the case at every resort, so it’s best to inquire about how your WDW resort will be handling race transportation.)

I tend to become Piglet when planning my arrival to something with a firm time target: very worried and terribly nervous.  I’ll always choose to be early rather than chance being late.  So I was quite pleased when, after picking up a few more people at other stops, we took off and quickly arrived at the pre-race staging area, located in a parking lot at Disney’s Hollywood Studios (DHS).

By then, it was maybe 7pm… and I had until 9:15 before getting into my corral… to wait another hour before my start.  We were so early, the DJ hadn’t even started doing his thing.  But, Disney listened and there were many more photo opportunities than last year, so we indulged.

Help, I’m slipping into the twilight zone…

Or is it, “Help, I’m about to be eaten by these giant clumps of sea grass, which have nothing at all to do with the Twilight Zone, the Tower of Terror, or running!”???  The mind boggles.

A few people complimented our awesome shirts, and one simply didn’t get it.  That would be the photographer in front of a large, lit screen.  He had a fairly short line, so we got in and waited, not really knowing what it was all about, but pretty sure something cool would come of it.  As we waited, an assistant came through, telling folks who weren’t in costume, “This is for costumed racers only.  If you’re not in costume, you can’t get a picture here.”  We thought that was weird, but he didn’t tell us to leave, so he clearly got our LOST theme.  The photographer, though, did not.  Get it.  He took one look at us and said, in a disdainful tone, “This is for costumes only.”  To which we replied, “We are in costumes!  Team DHARMA?  The DHARMA Initiative?  You know, LOST – on ABC, a Disney affiliate?!”  Nope.  Not a sign of recognition in his face.  Unwilling to argue, he waved us up to the screen and we posed for our magical picture.

Guess what?

No picture.  Not in my official race photos, not in Nancy’s race photos.  Not in Peter’s race photos.  That jerk-head photographer probably never even clicked the shutter.  Hmmph.

Anyway, we took some pictures, then milled around until we found a good spot to sit and wait.

(Note: I brought with me an "ear" from the Mickey towel art in my resort room – for sitting.  And I was glad I had it: the DHS parking lot looked to have been coated in Brill Cream.  It was shiny and, as I discovered upon pulling up my towel an hour or so later, sticky.  I was pretty glad the fresh blacktop stuck to an easily laundered towel and not my running skirt.)

The DJ had started spinning his very, VERY loud tunes and a ton of people were dancing up a storm.

“Place your hands on your hips… and pull your knees in ti-ight!”

And I once again wondered how they could possibly have the energy to run 10 miles after a two-hour dance workout in 77 degrees and 86% humidity.  I’d love to know the percentage of non-finishers and finishers who danced first.

As the time neared to start loading corrals, we took our show on the road, hitting the gigantic bank of porta-potties near the corrals.  I’ve read complaints from others about waiting a long, long time in potty lines that night, but I waited a grand total of 30 seconds.  Disney had the potties laid out in a T formation, but you really wouldn’t know that unless you went around the bottom of the T and discovered the nearly empty left side of it.  Back in that corner, there was virtually NO waiting at all. Always tour the full spectrum of potty options at a race; you never know where there may be an overlooked bank of ‘em.

Last year, the Tower of Terror 10-Miler divided runners into four huge corrals, each holding about 2,500 people.  The result was massive congestion and rampant frustration when faster runners couldn’t get by much slower people ahead of them.  This year, the slightly larger field was divided into 10 corrals, A through J, with about 500 runners each in A, B and C, 1000 each in D and E, 1500 each in G and H, and about 2000 each in I and J.  I was seeded in corral G, which was designated as the corral for expected finish times under two hours and five minutes, a 12:30/mile pace.  With all of my hip issues going into the race, I knew I wouldn’t be moving that fast, so I placed myself toward the back of the corral.  But when I heard a girl behind me say that she’d never – NEVER! – run before that night, I thought twice about my plan and started moving toward the front of the corral as we all, A through J, began the move from the staging area to the start line.

Photo courtesy of Larry Wiezycki

(This is different from other WDW races and it gets mixed reviews.  For this race, we entered the fenced-in corrals and hung out for a while.  Then, about 30 minutes before the first wave started, the far ends of the corrals opened and we all moved onto a road, still in our corral groupings.  As a whole, we all walked about a quarter-mile down the road, to the DHS parking lot tollbooths.  As each wave started, the other corrals moved up for their own starts.  I liked that walk to the start.  It gave my legs a chance to loosen up and felt more productive than sitting around any longer.  Yes, it did add to the overall distance, but in a relaxed, untimed way, just like I warm up before each training run.  I’d love for every race to start that way.)

Unfortunately, somewhere during that long walk to the start, I lost my place in the middle of the corral and wound up in the very back.  I still can’t figure out how that happened!  I kept up with the people ahead of me, and I thought we kept pace with everyone else, but when the fireworks went off (fireworks for every corral’s start – yay Disney!) and the announcers called out for corral G to “GO!”, I found myself in the very back of the group.  “Oh well,” I thought, “less pressure to go out too fast.”

As you can see on the course map…

… we quickly came to the first of two trips up and around a cloverleaf ramp.  My plan for the cloverleaf had been to hang toward the outer edge and leave room for the fast folks to run the inside tangent.  My plan got tossed faster than a liberal bill on Capitol Hill.  There really weren’t any faster folks running the inside tangent at that time, and the outer edge’s extreme angle was killing my right hip (the bad one) and my left ankle.  So I angled my run down toward the inside curve as I kept moving forward, passing a good many folks in the process.

(About that cloverleaf… in the center of it is a retention pond, used in Florida to capture stormwater runoff.  In the center of that pond, a large fireball was being sent up into the sky at regular intervals.  I have to question the thought process behind that “entertainment” – who thought it was a great idea to send more ambient heat into an already very warm race?!)

Okay, it wasn't that big – but maybe that hot.

My intention for this race was to take my time, enjoy the sights, and use it as a training run heading up to a half-marathon later in the month.  But at the end of the first mile, I felt really good.  After two miles, I felt great.  Bye-bye slow and scenic – hello redemption!  I knew at that point that I had a really good shot at beating my base goal (to finish under 2:30:00), and to maybe meet my wish goal (to finish in under 2:15:00.)

So, yeah – no pictures.  From start to finish, I never stopped.  Not to take pictures, not to use a porta-potty, not even to smear some Biofreeze on my hip.  (Yes, I was that chick walk-running past the med tent  with her hand down her shorts, trying to get Biofreeze on her hip.)  I recall seeing MANY more photo opps and props along the way.  The Queen of Hearts was out, as were the Haunted Mansion butlers and dancing ghosts, a ghostly football team, the Hag from Snow White, Jack Skellington and Sally from The Nightmare Before Christmas, Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog, and the hyenas from The Lion King.  I also saw a giant, inflatable spider hanging above us and the Evil Queen sending curses our way from overpasses.  There were laser lights and strobe lights and twinkling lights and spider web lights and balloon-y lights. 

Even without stopping for pictures, I found my head turning and my eyes darting here, there and everywhere, just trying to take it all in.  Disney clearly listened to last year’s complaints of less-than-expected course entertainment and stepped things way, WAY up.

As for me, up to mile eight, I kept feeling better with every passing mile.  I kept skipping walk breaks and my speed kept increasing.  Every ten minutes or so, I’d feel my heart beating a little too hard, and that cool, clammy sensation that screams impending heat exhaustion, so I’d slow down and drink my Nuun until it passed.  I picked up water at almost every stop: one cup went over my head and down my back, and two more went into my bottle. 

I really enjoyed the out and back on Osceola Parkway, and especially loved shouting out to Nancy and Peter (who had started ahead of me in corral D) as I saw them pass on the opposite side of the road.  The dirt road leading into the Wide World of Sports (WWOS) complex was my favorite portion of the race this year.  I had room to run, the dirt gave my joints a break from the asphalt, and it was way, way cool and eerie in there.

Photo courtesy of runDisney

Running through WWOS was a lot more fun this year, not being in gawdawful pain, and I appreciated the spectators in the baseball stadium with funny signs that gave me a few good laughs.  Apparently the big thingy in the middle of the baseball field was a tesla coil.  I didn’t know that at the time, though – it wasn’t working and I just saw a couple official-looking guys standing near it.  Apparently, it looked like this when it was working:

Leaving WWOS, I’d been rolling along, feeling terrific for eight miles, and then…

WHAM.

I hit a wall.  Not a typical, glucose crash wall, but an oh-my-god-I’m-freaking-EXHUASTED-from-too-many-days-of-anxiety wall.  I was properly fueled and hydrated, and no muscle groups or joints were protesting loudly, but I could have pulled over and been asleep on the pavement in seconds.  I could actually feel days of built-up adrenaline flow on out of my system, as if someone had pulled the stopper in a sink full of water, leaving me feeling drained of all remaining energy.  I swear, I think my brain concluded that I was totally going to finish and there was really no reason to continue its work keeping me awake.  It took monumental effort to get through those last two miles, more than I’ve ever put into a run.

In a daze, I powered through the cloverleaf again and through DHS, trying hard to find a little extra juice to run all of the final half-mile; I was within minutes of beating my wish goal.  There just wasn’t anything left to give, though.  I allowed myself to walk ten steps, then pick up the run again, only to find my legs walking again a minute later.  As I heard a volunteer shout “You’ve got this – the finish line is just around the corner!” I walked a few more steps, took a deep breath and willed my body to run just once more, around the corner, past the Tower of Terror, and to the finish, giving Goofy and his filthy white glove a big ‘ol high-five just before I crossed.

At that moment, I didn’t even care about my time goal.  All I wanted was to get my medal and sit.  Anywhere.  My hip began to hurt immediately after finishing, I'd been battling a headache since before the race started, and that tremendous exhaustion was being supplemented with a fine shaking of every muscle in my body.

Disney, wisely predicting a good many people would feel the same way, did not let me, or anyone else, flop down after the finish line.  We needed to keep moving and Disney made sure we did... A medal was placed around my neck, a bottle of water pushed into my hand, and I grabbed a banana and tore into it like I hadn’t eaten in a week. 

I honestly had no idea where I was or where I was going at that point, but I just kept shuffling along in the direction pointed to me by the volunteers.  I saw a man to my left, leaning against a metal barricade, head down as his companion rubbed his back and looked intently into his face.  And then he went down, head slamming into the barricade as the woman with him began screaming for help.  My brain woke completely with that and sent a message to run to the couple, but my legs just stopped in place.  That was really, really weird – they just didn’t respond.  I saw that a man in much better shape and size to handle things had gotten there, anyway, and we were all screaming for a medic, so I kept shuffling, knowing I’d only be in the way.

It was scary, seeing that go down, and was a reminder that running in our special brand of heat here in Florida can be dangerous. 

At the end of my long walk from the finish, I found, was the bag check retrieval point.  Disney listened again: no stairs to climb this year!  Bag check was still in the Indiana Jones Theater, but we’d been funneled to its floor from backstage, avoiding the gazillion stairs in the theater itself.  Well done, Disney; well done.  My bag retrieved, I grabbed a seat on the pavement, a little way past the theater, still backstage, to swap my running shoes for flip flops before finding somewhere to change into dry clothes.  Between shoes, I took a moment to slug down more Nuun and looked around… bodies, everywhere.  Some sitting, some prone, some looking as if they’d been cast there by tornado.  A few looked like me, industriously, if slowly, getting things together before moving on.  Most looked catatonic, like they might not move until sunrise. Again, scary.

My feet freed from their confines of socks and laces, I hobbled off to the changing tent, where I sweated more in five minutes than I had all race.  Epic fail, there.  Really, no one thought to put a FAN in there?!

Shortly after, I met up with Nancy and Peter and we went to grab some food before meeting up with our running group.  It kind of all went south for me at that point.  I was standing in line with Peter, chatting, when I felt myself go cold from head to toe and my hearing suddenly felt muffled.  I was going to faint, I could tell.  So I went to sit at our table, head down until the world stopped spinning around me and the light-headedness passed.  Food no longer sounded good, but I managed to drink some chocolate milk and perked up enough to go to the Tower of Terror for group pics and a ride.

I made it through some pictures and conversations, but it hit again – the overwhelming sense that I was going to faint.  I sat down until it passed again and then pulled the plug; I was DONE.  I took an unofficial finisher’s photo in front of the tower, hopped a bus to CBR, drove back to my resort, Coronado Springs, took a shower and fell into bed around 4am, 24 hours after I'd started the day. 

Still to come: final thoughts, my official time and will I race the Tower 10-Miler again?  Stay tuned! (Part Three here...)

Race Recap: 2013 Princess Half-Marathon

A little background…

I started writing this recap a few days ago and it read as a trip report, detailing where I went, what I did and with whom.  But I struggled with my pen.  Keyboard.  Whatever.  The tone and direction felt stiff at best, disingenuous at worst.

I’ve had a lot of time to think about what went into this race (13.1 miles’ worth, to be exact-ish) and in the end, the value of it, the meaningfulness I took away, had precious little to do with the what and where of it all.  For me, the poignancy of my first half-marathon is solidly attached to the people with whom I did it, and the new found understanding of my own self that resulted from it.

The “people” of it is a small group of women who came together years ago through our mutual love of Walt Disney World.  Over the years, we’ve forged deep-rooted friendships that have picked us up, dusted us off, pushed us forward, and lifted us up in laughter.  We’ve called each other on it when our behavior has been less than Magical; we’ve rallied for our sisters when one of us has faced inordinate difficulty; and we’ve created a bubble of camaraderie that offers shelter from whatever storms come our way.  And, within that precious group, nine of us went through nearly a year of frustration, excitement, pain and elation as we trained for the Princess Half and/or Royal Family 5K.  All of this, mind you, online… we ladies are scattered about the country – even the world, with one of us in the UK! 

So the Princess Half was both the culmination of our individual training journeys and the coming together of our virtual support team.  I can’t honestly say which was more important to me, running my own race, or celebrating my friends’ accomplishments.  I don’t think I could have one without the other.  It was vitally important to me that my friends know how critical their support and encouragement was to my own success, and that they knew how much their own achievements meant to me.  I don’t know how well I accomplished that; I am, indeed, far more fruitful with the written word than the spoken.

But that was my mindset going into our race weekend.  I reveled in our shared hilarity as we dined and toured the Walt Disney World parks together in the days before the race.  I cheered with all my might for those of us who raced the Royal Family 5K the day before the half-marathon.  I silently berated my body when inadequate sleep and a blood sugar crash hobbled me and I spent half a day in our room, trying to feel better enough to rejoin them all.  I sometimes took words the wrong way and worried that my own words weren’t coming across properly.  I got tired.  I worried about the race.  I cried for no apparent reason.  By the time race morning came around, I may have shared more in common with Zelda Fitzgerald than Deena Kastor.

Race Day

1:50 a.m.  What an insane time to be getting up.  But I did – showered, prepared some oatmeal to go, threw back a little coffee, and was off.

“We’re on a bus at 3 o’clock in the morning! Wearing tiaras! Woo hoo!”

We arrived at the pre-race staging area with plenty of time to check bags, relax, eat and spend some quality time in the Race Retreat.  For an extra handful of cash, runDisney makes available a Race Retreat tent, in which Retreaters can sit, grab breakfast, stretch and use their own set of porta-potties and bag check stations.  All of that was nice, but I purchased entrance to Race Retreat for one reason only: to have a warm place to wait before the race.  See, I’d been at WDW that frightful morning of the 2010 WDW Half-Marathon when it snowed.  SNOWED!  Okay, as a former Western New Yorker, I’ll admit that it was something closer to sleet than big, fluffy flakes, but still… SNOW!  In FLORIDA!!!  My $100 admission to Race Retreat was an insurance policy: chances were good that, by shelling out that cash, it wouldn’t be cold enough to need it.  But if it was, then I’d have some shelter.  Either way, I’d win.

Needless to say, it wasn’t cold in 2013.  In fact, we were given warnings like this all race weekend:

I know they were necessary, but they made this Florida girl laugh a little: it was in the high 60s and near 100% humidity on race morning and I couldn’t have been happier – perfect conditions for me!  So long as the forecasted rain held off… and I insured that by wrapping my phone/GPS/camera in cling wrap, rendering it unusable as a camera.  You’re welcome, Princesses.

So, yeah, Race Retreat was totally unnecessary as a means of shelter, but it wound up being a nice spot to eat breakfast, grab some extra water, and spend some time on my foam roller before checking my bag with no wait. 

It really felt like we’d just gotten there when the first announcements came for Corrals A through D to start our walk to the starting corrals.  But which corral?  I’d been debating that question for weeks prior.  Ostensibly, runDisney requires proof of one having finished a race of 10K or longer in order to qualify for placement in the earliest corrals.  I had no such proof.  We have few 10K races near me, to start, and I skipped the one for which I’d registered in order to let my stupid ITBS continue healing. And yet… I’d somehow been placed in corral C of a spread of A through H.  I knew I’d be slower than most folks in C simply because I planned to play it very conservatively in the beginning, taking lots of time to walk and stretch that ding-danged IT Band before doing very much running.  Two ladies from our group were in D, and I was tempted to move back to hang with them, but their bus had been held up in traffic.  I took it as a sign and joined friends Tracy and Debbie in C, after big hugs to Chanin and Jodi as they headed up to A.  Rockstars, those ladies are.

I absolutely made the right call.  Within minutes of entering the C corral, I got word from another member of our group, Mary: she’d arrived and wanted to start in C, too, though she’d been placed in B.  With hugs and good wishes to Tracy and Debbie, I salmoned my way upstream, to the far back of the corral, to wait for Mary.  She and I decided to hang out back there and ease into the race with the seven-minute buffer between our start and that of D.  Before we knew it, a flash of fireworks lit the sky and the wheelchairs and elites had started, then A, then B… we were next!  And… we had to pee!

Seriously.  Could we have made it to the first on-course porta-potties?  Certainly.  But that would’ve taken time off our pace.  There was a bank of potties directly across from the starting corral, and a little opening in the barricades... we took off, sprinted to the nearest Green Towers of Ick, took care of business and sprinted back into our corral just before our own fireworks went off.  I felt like I’d already won a race.

The Course, Part 1

I loved starting in the back of our corral and I’d absolutely do it again! We had plenty of room to move before the inevitable bottlenecks formed further along the course, and we ended up being directly under where the fireworks went off for corral D’s start.  It was like our own private pyrotechnics show!  Very fun; very cool.

As was Mary – very, VERY fun.  I’d warned her earlier: I’m an anti-social runner.  I’m not unpleasant, but I prefer to run alone.  I’m not chatty.  I savor the solitude of my long training runs, where I’m not Mom, or worker, or daughter, or even friend – I’m just a body in motion as I cover those double-digit miles.  So I was genuinely surprised to find that I really enjoyed having Mary’s company over the first four or so miles of the race.  My walking pace was a little faster than hers; her running pace was a little faster than mine.  It worked out well, I think, keeping us both at a conservative pace without fear of falling way behind.  And I know, based on my Tower of Terror 10-Miler experience, that I’d never have bothered stopping for some pictures, had it not been for Mary.  Not that I could’ve gotten pictures on my own, anyway.  The no-rain guarantee cling wrap, remember?  By the time we reached the toll plaza for Magic Kingdom parking, it felt like the race was flying by.

Ta-da, Mile 3(ish)!

We knew that we had friends Tracy E., Kristi and Chris somewhere along the course cheering for us, but I had no idea where to find them.  Up until that point, it had been dark and there really weren’t many spectators.  But making our way through the Ticket and Transportation Center parking lot, cheers and applause filled the air and I tried hard to keep an eye out for our pals… sure enough, they were there, cheering us on!  I can’t even remember if we stopped; I don’t think so, but knowing they were there picked us up more than a bit!

As we entered the Magic Kingdom shortly after Mile 5, the sun was up (though not really out – it remained overcast throughout the race, which helped keep the heat down) and I really soaked in the feeling of running down Main Street USA.

 

Look at us, just hanging out in front of a castle, in the middle of a half-marathon!

Through all of my training, my wall had always come between miles four and six, like clockwork.  But, between having fun with Mary and the distractions of the Magic Kingdom, I never hit that wall at all.  Or I did and never noticed.  But then, that’s not really a wall at all.  (With due apologies to Dr. Seuss.)  I had, however, trained my bladder to expect a restroom break around mile 5.5, right as we went through Frontierland – home of the Happiest Restroom on Earth.  Mary didn’t need to stop, so with a high-five and best wishes, she ran on while I sidetracked to an actual, air conditioned restroom.  No mid-course porta-potty for this Princess!  I’m not gonna lie; I stayed in there longer than necessary.  Washed my hands – with soap! – adjusted my Team Sparkle skirt and iFitness belt, refilled my water bottle with Nuun and splashed some cool water on my face.  It was worth the extra few minutes on my time to emerge feeling completely refreshed and ready to tackle the second half of the race.

The Course, Part 2

It’s weird – I really feel like I ran two races that day: one to mile 6, as we left the Magic Kingdom, and one from mile 7 through the finish.  Mary had stopped for pictures and ended up right behind me as we exited the Magic Kingdom and we ran together for a short while, but I looked over my shoulder for her a little before mile 7 and didn’t see her.  We’d all agreed to run our own races, so I sent her a mental wish for strong legs and a good second half and kept going.

I’ve become used to a massive second wind around the 7 to 9 mile point of my long training runs.  I don’t know what happens, but I always find myself turning inward at that point, becoming simultaneously more tuned in to the rhythm of my body and highly aware of what’s going on around me.  The feeling is entirely familiar: back in my younger days as a ballet dancer, I found that same sensation after long hours of classes and rehearsals.  There would come a point at which muscle memory took over the mechanics, freeing my soul to feel and express the music.  When it happens with running, I feel a surge of strength coupled with a deep relaxation and, I imagine, it’s the same idea: I stop thinking about running and just run.  As I rounded a corner near the Grand Floridian Resort, I sensed no pain, felt stronger than ever, and knew, without a doubt, that I’d finish the race, even if I had to walk most of the final miles.

Timing is everything they say. 

As I came around that corner, feeling so good on the inside, I spied our ace chEAR Squad in time to make my way over to them for hugs.  I can’t remember just what they said, something about me looking strong or energetic, but whatever it was hit me like a lightning bolt.  Some part of me recognized that my outside matched what I was feeling inside and – BOOM! – my conservative race strategy flew out the window like dirty dishwater.

Mary, with our super-amazing cheerers, Kristi, Tracy and Chris (he’s aaaaaalllll focus here…)

It was exactly what I needed at exactly the right time.  According to iSmoothRun, I dropped my pace every mile from 8 on.  Between mile 8 and the finish, I dropped a total of three and a half minutes off of my mile split times.  My body knew what to do and required no further input from my brain, which went into strategic mode and, though I can’t begin to tell you what kinds of photo opps or entertainment was along the course over that period, I began seeing every other runner in front of me in extreme clarity.  I found myself anticipating other runners’ moves before they made them and using that information to slow down, speed up, take a small step left or right, find an opening and tear through it like Seabiscuit hot on the heels of War Admiral.  Using my advantage of knowing the WDW roadways well as a driver, I moved to the inside of the final cloverleaf overpass, passing dozens of other runners as I climbed swiftly up the far inside on the grass, where the steep angle leveled off to a space just wide enough on which to run.

The faster and harder I went, the stronger I felt.  The more people I passed, the more determined I was to pass more of them.  Fearing a burnout right before the finish, I forced myself at mile 12 to ease back, eat a few more Honey Stinger chews, which I’d been alternating with bites of a Clif bar every 30 minutes for fuel, and take a deep breath before letting loose.  I’m both proud of and humbled by what my body did for me that day.  Feeling a 13-mile-wide smile spread across my face, I flew through Epcot and sprinted across the Finish line, feeling the power of a year of training and the support of my running group course through my veins.

The Aftermath

I had no real goals, going into my first half-marathon.  I was sure I’d finish, barring any debilitating injury, and didn’t want to set myself up for potential disappointment by going in with any particular finish time in mind.  I hoped to finish without knee pain – I’d managed my final 12-mile training run without incurring any ITBS nastiness – but wasn’t at all sure that was realistic.  I finished with an official chip time of 3:23:13, while iSmoothRun reported a 3:08:11 finish with pauses for my stops for pictures, potties, etc.  I’m completely satisfied with both times.  Fast?  No.  But that makes my time easily beatable in future races, right?!  And I just love that I finished with only enough gas left in my tank to get back to Race Retreat for a big plate of food and a chocolate milk.

Beyond my own performance, I am thrilled to report that every one of our group crossed that Finish line.   I was exhausted, but determined to stick around until each one of us was accounted for.  I’m so glad I did!  To see us all with our medals, and to hear the quick run-throughs of each of our race experiences, filled me with a pride so much larger than what I held for myself.  Despite our many differences, we all worked hard, persevered and achieved something I’m not sure any of us had previously dreamed possible.

Mel, T, Jodi, Mary, Z, Chanin – you are ALL rockstars in my book! LY/MI!

The rest of our trip was a blur of celebration.  We iced down, stretched, showered, ate, got dressed and dragged our tired bodies through the Magic Kingdom the afternoon of our race, and indulged in a celebration dinner at ‘Ohana. 

“’Ohana means ‘family’… And ‘family’ means no one gets left behind – or forgotten.” 

I am SOOOOOOOO proud of you all!!!

# # #

So, the question I’ve been asked repeatedly: will I do the Princess Half again?  Maybe not.  I really, truly enjoyed the experience and I’m so glad I ran this as my first 13.1 distance race.  Given the uncertainty about how my leg would hold up, the congested, bottlenecked, impossible-to-run-fast course was a perfect fit for me.  And the woman-centric theme was an ideal fit for our group of Mother Runners and Best Running Friends.  But it feels very much like a one-and-done event for me.  While I’m genuinely glad I took the time for a few pictures along the course, I absolutely relished ignoring everything that makes a Disney race “Disney” in the second half, too. 

I started this running journey thinking that I needed the theme and entertainment of a Disney race to make me excited enough to run 13.1 miles.  As it turns out, I’m more than excited enough all on my own.  Perhaps the single greatest reward I received after a year of training is having learned this: I love to run.  And I don’t need flashing lights, photo opps, or the promise of a big, sparkly medal to make me want to do it again.

Though a super-cute race shirt doesn’t hurt. 

I am all registered for the 2013 Tower of Terror 10-Miler, so I'm not discounting all future Disney races.  I want my shot at race redemption. ;)  But I'm just as enthusiastic about doing some smaller, cheaper races to support my local running community, too.

I suppose I'm officially a Runner now.

Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler - Race Recap!

So, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror 10-Miler has come and gone and I’m happy to report that I was a finisher.

I think.

Maybe.

About the “happy” part, I mean, not the finishing.  I did finish.  I’m not sure if I’m happy about that, though.

Here’s what happened…

Race Day, Part One: Packet Pick-up/Expo and Dinner

A childhood friend and the gal who got me into running Disney in the first place, Nancy, also ran the race and graciously shared her villa at Saratoga Springs Resort with me.  So on race day morning, I made the drive form home to WDW, found Nancy and unloaded my car before we set off for the expo.  Let me tell ya – shopping the expo is a lot more fun with a girlfriend than with a kid!  It was great to verbally work out race jitters and excitement with each other as we wandered about and did some shopping.  I felt like the size and scale of the expo was a bit smaller and more manageable than that of the 2012 Princess Half-Marathon weekend, which was great; I get overwhelmed by too much noise and visual stimulation, plus I didn’t want to spend too much time on my feet before the race, right?

Ooo, skeery... oh, and have I mentioned that I'm blonde now?

Yet another giant, man-shaped, scratchy race shirt. But... it glows in the dark. of my drawer. where it'll stay forever.

After a quick lunch at Wide World of Sports (WWOS) complex, we went back to the villa with every intention of napping until 5pm.  I. could. not. sleep.  Too excited, too nervous about my knee situation, too amped up with adrenaline.  It was a relief when my alarm went off at 5pm.  FINALLY, I could get dressed in my race outfit and feel like we were getting somewhere.  Of course, we still had 5 hours until the start…

Since we weren’t staying at an official race host resort, and neither of us was excited by the prospect of traversing the big, dark WWOS parking lot (where anyone driving to the race would need to park, then take a shuttle bus to the start at Hollywood Studios), at 3am, we chose to make the very short drive to Port Orleans Riverside (which was a host resort with buses to the race start), park there, eat dinner, then take a bus to the race.  This worked out terrifically!  I had a yummy plate of pasta around 6pm, along with lots and lots of Nuun-infused water.  At shortly after 7pm, we got on the bus outside the resort lobby and were off to the race!

Race Day, Part Two: The Race!

I was really, really impressed with the pre-race staging area.  There seemed to be ample room to move around with 12,000 or so of our fellow racers and their families, plenty of porta-potties, and lots of good music playing to get us pumped up.  Maybe a little too pumped up.  At risk of sounding judgmental, I was shocked by how many racers were dancing up a storm before the race.  Nancy and I sat there watching them, wondering aloud how anyone could possibly muster the energy to run 10 hot, humid miles after an hour of dancing?!  And by “hot” and “humid,” I mean HOT and HUMID.  Honestly, it was business as usual for me; it felt no different than any of my training runs all summer long, save for the lack of scorching sun on top of it all.  But I can’t imagine how awful it must have felt to anyone not acclimated to our delightful Florida climate in September.  I sat for a good hour, saving my legs and feet, eating a small snack, and downing more water.

We chose to get into our respective corrals (A for Nancy – way to go! – and C for me) before instructed to do so, and I’m glad we did; we avoided the mass of humanity moving into their corrals and I was able to use a porta-potty with minimal waiting.  This, I must point out, Disney got so, so right – porta-potties in EVERY CORRAL!  Oh, how I hope they’ll do the same for future races, because it was ever-so appreciated.  I have to admit that waiting alone in my corral was lonely.  I didn’t want to waste my iPhone’s battery, so I didn’t have that for distraction, and it was past my usual bedtime; I was getting sleepy.  I was thankful when, at 9:30pm, the call came to exit the corrals into the road at their other ends, from where we, staying in our corral groups, walked down the road to the starting line.

Before long, the fireworks went off for the first group of wheelchair racers, then for the second group, then for A corral, and B corral.  We C folks moved up and I stuck to the far left side of the road, from where I could lean out to my left a bit and see what was ahead… I was a bit in front of the halfway point of our corral and the starting line was actually the toll booths for the Studios parking lot. 

The first 5 miles of the course took us out of Hollywood Studios and out-and-back on Osceola Parkway before turning into the WWOS complex.  I knew I had to walk every other quarter-mile stretch to save my knee, but waited to see what the crowd did before deciding whether to start with a quarter-mile walk, or start running first – we mostly had to walk through the start line, but then the crowd picked up to a jog, so I did, too.  A funny thing with IT Band Syndrome (ITBS) is that going uphill is fine, but the downhill kills.  So I ran up the ramp to Osceola Parkway and started my walk on the downhill.  And that, folks, is just annoying as hell, to not take advantage of gravity and gain some speed on the downhill.  People were flying past me as I slowly walked down, hugging the inside of the curve like it was my long-lost lover.  But once we hit the flats again, I was back to running and felt great!  I was warm, but nowhere near overheated, felt perfectly hydrated, and as strong as an elite athlete.  There was a decided lack of themeing along those stretches of highway, but it didn’t bother me in the least as I found my happy pace, alternating quarter-mile stretches of walking and run-walk intervals.  I was passing other racers left and right, which is always good for the runner’s psyche, right?

Passing the marker for Mile 3, I allowed myself to wonder, “Maybe I finally beat ITBS into submission – maybe I’ll nail this race after all!”  All of my training seemed to be paying off and I felt the best I’ve ever felt while running.

At 3.25, I felt a familiar tightening in my left leg.  At 3.5, it felt like an ice pick was jammed into the outside of my knee by the end of every 1-minute run interval.  ITBS struck again.  Still, I was able to run 50 seconds at a time without pain, so “Maybe,” I bargained with my body, “if I skip every other run interval and only run 45 seconds at a time when I do run, I won’t have to walk the rest of the race…”  It worked for a while, but by Mile 5, I was down to running 30 or so seconds every 5 minutes.  And it HURT.  Piercing, excruciating, sob-inducing pain.  I’d put the pain level on 11.  Out of 10.  But, magically, the pain went away when I switched to a walk.  I knew what I had to do.

Only halfway through the race, I was hobbled to a walk and, truthfully, I should have parked my fanny on the side of the road, cheered for my fellow racers, and hitched a ride on the sag wagon when the sweepers eventually came through.  The experts say often that distance running is a huge mental game; that it takes some serious mental strength to veto the bad thoughts sent by our brains, telling us to quit.  I, strangely, found myself in the exact opposite position: my mental toughness wasn’t tough enough to pull the plug and save myself from further pain.  My brain was insistent: “You trained for this.  You’ve already done the distance.  Don’t quit now – earn that medal!” 

The crowd around me was almost exclusively walkers at that point; I’d been passed by the runners I’d passed earlier.  We all walked down the dark, creepy dirt path that was decorated with the occasional skeleton in a cage and large, fake bug.  I’d put the decorating on par with a stroll through Michael’s craft store this time of year.  Definitely not up to Disney standards.  As we entered WWOS, every field was lit and, coming in from the dark, I felt a bit of renewed energy.  By the time we entered the baseball stadium to run the bases, I picked it up and pulled off a sad, limpy jog for the photogs along the diamond.  But the pain from that was so debilitating, I crawled to a slow walk as we exited WWOS. 

Pulling off the course to stretch my leg, I looked back, almost hoping to see the sweeper so I could end the agony, knowing that I’d done all I could.  Nope.  Not a sweeper in sight.  With a sigh, I started walking again, head down in defeat.  We were back on a dark stretch of highway again for a couple miles and the crowd around me was quiet and subdued, all of us inwardly-focused on our individual ailments.  It was rough, rough going as we climbed the ramp back to Hollywood Studios.

And that’s when I got mad.  Really, really mad.  I had trained for that race!  And I’d hydrated properly and felt fantastic, apart from my stupid knee.  I wasn’t sick, my heart rate wasn’t even reaching the point of aerobic, let along anaerobic.  And a “little” lousy pain was keeping me from reaching my goal of finishing strong?! No sir-ee.  Winding through Hollywood Studios, I did the stupidest thing possible at that point: I ignored the pain tearing through my leg and ran my way through the finish line.  I was strong, fierce and every bit the Badass Mother Runner my race shirt advertised. 

My version of a finisher's photo.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.  That last run did nothing to help my final time and left me unable to bend my knee at all without intense pain.  I got my medal, skipped the finisher’s photo, grabbed the food and water someone handed me, took a bag of ice from the medical tent and, in a daze, slowly limped to the spot Nancy and I had designated to meet after the race.  I sat on a ledge, icing my knee and trying not to cry until Nancy appeared, haloed in light from a spotlight behind her and carrying an ice-cold Corona, complete with lime wedge.  Exactly what I needed – a beer and a friend to make me smile!

Eventually, the ice, beer and an Aleve got my pain under control and I retrieved my bag of fresh clothing (thanks a bunch, Disney, for making us go down, and then back up, a bazillion STAIRS to get our bags after running 10 miles), so we could enjoy the after-party.  We had a great time riding Star Tours and the Tower of Terror, and taking a picture with Lord Vader.  

Getting whacked in the face with our heavy, glow-y medals.

At 3am, after killing yourself to run 10 miles in 80-degrees and 89% humidity and downing a beer or two, "using the force" with Vader sounds really badass.

By 3am, the adrenaline wore off, fatigue set in, and we boarded a bus back to Port Orleans, where we got in my car and drove back to our villa.  We spent the next day showing off our awesome medals and slowly making our way around the Food & Wine Festival at Epcot.  It was the perfect recovery day – small, frequent bites to eat, slow walking to stretch the legs, and a fun friend with whom to chat.

The Aftermath

So I’ve had a few days to digest my race and I’m still finding it hard to feel good about finishing.  I think, had I never before run that far, maybe I could be satisfied with finishing in 2:42:07.  But knowing that I’ve already done the distance in training, and that I did it in 2:13:55, makes it tough to celebrate.  Had I quit when the pain hit, at 3 miles, I’d still have received the cool medal, I’d have had more time and energy to enjoy the party with my friend, and, most importantly, I’d have done no further damage to my knee.  I’m now off running altogether for a while to let the inflammation go down and then I’ll be starting from scratch.  I can’t honestly think of anything about the race that was worth doing myself in like this.

And that’s a big part of my disappointment: bad enough that my body let me down – Disney let me down, too.  Leading up to the race, I kept telling myself that, even if I had to walk a lot of it, the incredible entertainment that Disney routinely throws into its races would keep me distracted from my slow pace.  I didn’t want to stop for pictures, but I’d have enjoyed seeing others do so and would have gotten a kick out of some performers doing their thing on the sides of the road… but there were only a couple of photo ops along the course and they were of the jump-in-take-a-pic-jump-out variety; not much to look at as a passer-by.  No characters at the start or finish, either.  The lack of entertainment coupled with not being able to perform as I knew I could when uninjured made for a whole lot of frustration.

I hope that my feelings about my own performance aren’t confused with my appreciation for the efforts of everyone else who took on the Tower of Terror 10-Miler, though.  I think every person who finished that race was amazing!  And maybe I am, too.  I might just need a little more time to process it all.

So… now what?

Now, I heal, strengthen, and start running in teeny-tiny distances that don’t hurt, hopefully building back up in time for the Princess Half-Marathon in February.  I’ll change my habit of running always with the road slanting down on my left, which seems to have been the catalyst for ITBS in the first place.  I’ll admire the 10M sticker on my car, knowing that I can go the distance, even if not as I’d envisioned doing it.  And I’ll wear my “I did it!” race shirt with pride.  But I’ll never, ever run injured like that again.