After a week of hiatus (apologies!), our blog is back in action with a report about this year's Walt Disney World® Marathon Weekend presented by Cigna! I had the honor of running during race weekend for the 3rd year in a row, and it was my husband's 4th year in a row.
As usual, it was such fun! We always like to have some days in the parks both before and after the races, so we truly were able to enjoy the full experience. We started off with a bang by going through the Expo, touring the new Disney Springs area, and we followed it up with a treat: the last night of the Osborne Lights. I will be dedicating blogs to both of these last 2 topics in the coming weeks (it's just too much for one post!)
When running a race in WDW, if you stay on property, you can always be assured that there will be transportation to the event; that being said, we aren't fans of having to wake up super early to avoid the traffic when riding a bus. We decided to stay on the monorail for quick access to and from the event. In the past, we have always been proponents of using the Race Retreat, but with this year's good forecast, we made the decision to forego it. This allowed us to sleep 'til 3am rather than rising at 2am.
We were to Epcot in fairly short order, but due to the heightened security, we ended up waiting in the line to have our bags searched for quite sometime. This resulted in our jogging to our corral (E)... so at least we got a bit of a warm up in! We heard the National Anthem being sung and knew we had to hustle. We arrived about 5 minutes before the first corral released. Close one! My advice for future races is to not bring a bag if it can be avoided. If you do, arrive early to avoid arrive to your corral late.
Weather this time around was a bit chilly for the majority of the trip, but for our Half Marathon, it was absolutely perfect. We had intended not to stop for any pictures, but ... well, who can resist when lines are short for characters you've never had a photo with? All told, we met our goal time-wise even with the stops!
Entertainment throughout the course was fun as always, and each year I feel like the corral releases are more organized. This year was no exception. Throughout the run I tried to take some video clips. Considering I was running throughout most of them, I'm impressed with my camera work (hahaha!). I've compiled everything into a little video so you can appreciate the fun of a runDisney event.