Hey everyone, A little late for this but better late than never!

Well the weekend of our very first half marathon had arrived. We were uber excited and also slightly nervous. Our life had gotten a quite busy leading up to our trip that we didn’t get as many practice miles in as we had hoped! Oh well it’s here now!  Lets see how this goes!

Map of the 5k route

Map of the half marathon route

The weekend started for us with the Expo on Friday.  The expo is the place where you pick up your race packets with your bib and shirts but it also has a large vendor section of merchandise for purchase.  Other than to pick up our packets we were there for 1 reason the coveted New Balance 2014 runDisney shoes!  These shoes are one of the most coveted items for the races and as such draw huge lines.  Originally the organizers set it up that you needed to register online at 6am to book a spot.  We set our alarm got up and tried to login into the website…..and tried ……and tried …..and tried.  FRUSTRATION…. PANIC….  We could’t get through on the site!!!! We gave up and decided to just show up at the expo and see what happens.  We got there early and located the line; thankfully it wasn’t that long!  WOW.  Thanks to my wife for researching and know exactly where to look for the line and making a b-line to it.  We found out that the website had crashed and no one was able to get though!  Good to know we weren’t the only ones and we still had a chance to get the shoes.  Finally made it to the front of the line and had a sales rep take us inside to the sales floor.  The New Balance sales rep was amazing and we were able to get all the shoes we wanted in the sizes we needed.

We are now a runDisney shoe family!

Now that the shoes were taken care of, it was onto the next part the race packet picket  Other than a really long line and some small correctable glitches the packet pick up was relatively uneventful.

We will now be known as numbers 12526 and 12530 (you can see my tired eyes from setting a 6am alarm ~unnecessarily

Next it was back to the expo to check out the vendors and search out our running idol Carrie Burrows!  We were so excited to finally meet the woman that got us hooked on this crazy idea!  The woman who supported, encouraged and helped us along the way as we trained.

The infamous Carrie Burrows point! ( we were just a tad excited! lol)

We even spotted Jeff Galloway

The expo would also prove to be the source of another bucket list meet up for us!  It happened to be in the parking lot on our way out but still just as memorable!  Another amazing running and blogger she also brought us a huge supply of Emergen_C; our favorite post run drink!

Kristin Long aka @BamagirlRUNS LOVE her southern Belle accent! I could listen to her talk all day!! 🙂

Saturday had come and the day started off with me me running  Mickeys Jingle Jungle 5k.  I had to get up early for this one but I didn’t care!  It was my first runDisney race!

It was still dark when I got to the Animal Kingdom and snapped this pic of the start line

Thankfully the sun was coming up when the smoke when off to start the run!

As you know my run would not be complete without a #Runfie or two (the first is at the entrance to Animal Kingdom the second as I approached Mt Everest)

Had to stop for at least one character photo before it was done

It’s all about the bling and the congrats from Mickey and Minnie 🙂

I did not have any time to dilly dally after the 5k!  I quickly got my pic with Mickey and Minnie then jumped in the van to go back to the hotel to pick up my wife and kids for their runs!  My son was running a 200m for his age group and my daughter was running a 400m for her age group!

Pre and post run shots of the two mini_me’s

After all that excitement it was time to go back to the hotel and rest up for our big race that evening!   We had lunch then a nap and dinner and it was time to meet up With Carrie again!  She is so amazing!  She took the time to meet us at the hotel and ride the shuttle with us to the race so she could walk us through the process of our first runDisney half marathon!  We LOVE her!

All costumed up! We chose a Princess and the frog theme 🙂

Having some fun in the lobby with Carrie waiting for the shuttle bus

Carrie stayed with us the whole time till it was time to get into our corals! We were so thankful she was so giving of her time to make sure we were all settled!

The time had come for us to split up; Carrie to her corral somewhere near the front and us in coral “L” THE LAST ONE!.  We didn’t mind being in the last coral, though, we were just so dam excited to finally be there!.  Then the rain started……  eh it’s not a big deal its not raining that much,  its just “spitting” …..

With a flash and a bang corral A was off!.  The really cool thing about this race and they did these fireworks to send off each and every corral! (this pic does not do the fire works justice! They blow off so many of them each time it was amazing)  What a great way to get pumped for 13.1 miles!  Our only problem was that being in the last corral meant that we didn’t actually cross the start line until 10:40 (40 mins after the first group of runners).  We were quite wet and quite cold before he race even began! Oh well here goes!  We had no idea how crowded it would be at the beginnning.  It was very difficult to get going since we were all packed into the coral like sardines!  There was a lot of walking for he first mile or so since there simple was just no where to go!  Some people resorted to running outside the cones just to get aroud pepople.  We finally got around he large crowd and settled ino he race and pace that we had planned for this race.  The rain and the narrow parts where we were forced to walk had slowed us down quite a lot from he timing we had wanted to so we didnt stop for character photos.  We did stop and take two runfie’s though!

First pic a the Osborne Family Lights the 2nd we stole a pic with Vader and Boba Fet beside the line

By the end we were SOAKED and I mean soaked and we each had some knee pain but we still fisined strong and running with smiles holding hands!

It’s all about the bling and this medal did not disappoint!

Words cannot describe the feeling you have after crossing the finish line especially for the first time!  Those feelings were also amplified because I had the amazing pleasure of crossing that finish line with my wife.  I can’t say enough how proud I am of my wife and our progress and success together!  To set out and complete a goal like this has been such an amazing bonding experience for us and has only solidified our relationship.  I highly recommend running together as a couple; you will be amazed at what it does for you, your spouse and your bond together 🙂 ❤

Ill leave you with a photo recap video done by Marc Acosta, try and count to see how many people you know and how many times me and my family show up in it!!

#KeepSmilin 🙂

How did your first runDisney experience and/or first half marathon go?