By TMSM Racing Disney Guest Blogger Catie Neal
So when I last left you all, we had finished up our 5K and had enjoyed a nice day in the parks! After the magical day we experienced, we headed back to our hotel room to prep for the 10K. We had decided to be Huey, Dewey, and Louie for the 10K. For those of you who don’t know: Huey is red, Dewey is blue, and Louie is green. We had the entire outfits pulled together except for our duckbills. And wouldn’t you know it, but fate had it in for us! I searched all day long in Animal Kingdom for the duckbills, and FINALLY as we were leaving the park I found them in the gift shop right outside the exit of the park! BINGO! We got everything laid out for in the morning and then set our alarms for the wake up call.
Our alarms went off at 3:45. We got up, got dressed, and grabbed all of our essentials for the race. We piled up into the rental car and headed off to the start line. We got parked, grabbed our gear and shuffled off towards the start line. We wove through bag check – which went super smoothly by the way – and then entered into the pre-race staging area. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the pre-race staging area; instead we headed over towards the corrals and the hundreds of port-a-potties to handle some business.
After the obligatory bathroom break, we posed for a couple of group pictures and chatted with our dad. We then said goodbye to Mom as she headed for her corral and Ross and I headed off to ours. Once in the corral, Ross and I pushed ourselves up near the front of the corral so we wouldn’t have to wait super long. It was actually beautiful running weather, not too hot and not so chilly that it made the wait for the start unbearable. It wasn’t too long before the volunteers started moving us out of the corral area and to the start chute. Ross and I ended up being towards the beginning of the second wave of A corral. It was pretty nice, but again, runDisney only had fireworks for the initial start of the race. Boo! Please refer to my 5K recap to understand my complete disappointment in this fact.
Ross and I got our “runners, set, go!” and we were off on Minnie’s 10K adventure. We started out at a decent pace not pushing too much but going quick enough to get the blood pumping. We exited the parking lot and ran through the EPCOT parking entrance and out towards the main highway. We quickly came up to the Mile 1 marker – which had Donald on it and we of course stopped for a quick photo op. Then right beyond the Mile 1 marker, was the first character stop – it was Scrooge McDuck and Launchpad McQuack – obviously needed a picture with them as well. We ended up waiting a good 5-7 minutes at this character stop; however, since I consider them a super rare character, I didn’t mind! While in line, we made friends with some of the people waiting with us. One of the gentlemen was also a perfect Dopey runner, so we snapped a quick selfie, which of course I put up on social media! After our picture we took back off. We came upon the next photo stop, which was Lilo & Stitch, and since we had breakfast at O’hana Ross decided he didn’t care if we stopped for the picture so we kept running. Next up came the first water stop and the Mile 2 marker. We kept on trucking through and up the exit ramp for Mile 3. This has you then loop around back towards EPCOT’s back entrance. We crossed over onto EPCOT property and stopped for a quick photo with some stilt walkers. My brother used to be a Disney cast member and ended up knowing one of the guys! It was pretty cool!
You run through a small area of the backstage area and you quickly enter into EPCOT right beside the Norway Pavilion. They had some Vikings out saying hello and my brother ended up knowing one of those guys as well. We got quite the Viking welcome as we entered the park – it really helped out with our energy level! We grabbed our cups of water from the second water stop and of course thanked as many volunteers as possible! (For those of you who don’t run, seriously these races would not happen without the THOUSANDS of volunteers who sacrifice sleep and time in order to help all of us crazy, Disney addicts, get through all the miles each weekend. Any small amount of thanks you can offer them throughout the race goes a LONG way!) Ross and I continued to snake our way around World Showcase, and we quickly came upon the American Pavilion. At the American Pavilion they had the original 3 out in their Revolutionary finest. Being from Virginia, I mean it was clear we HAD to stop for this picture op! The line was incredibly long, but worth every bit of the wait! We got our picture and took off towards Morocco. The photo op there was the Genie in his vacation outfit. We knew we wanted to grab this picture op as well. As we were heading towards the back of the line, the other Perfect Dopey gentleman we had met grabbed us and put us in line with him! I made sure we snapped a picture together!
Ross and I took off again and got ready to exit EPCOT and head out towards the Boardwalk Area. I really like this part of the 10K as it usually has a lot of spectators out cheering on runners. It’s also about mile 4.5-5 and it helps give you a great boost through the last bit of the race. Ross and I grabbed a quick picture with Pluto and then kept on running. We ran through the last water stop of the course and thanked as many volunteers as we could and kept on trucking. We entered back into EPCOT and headed towards Future World and out towards the finish line. We grabbed our medals and our post race snacks and headed off to watch our Mom cross the finish line. At this point, I would have LOVED to have had a heat shield, but runDisney was not handing them out at this race. And since we drove our car, we ended up not checking a bag so I didn’t have any sweat clothes with me to help warm up.
We watched Mom cross the finish line and met up with her. We FaceTimed our dad real quick and he gave us all a congratulations on completing day #2 of Dopey! Ross took off to grab a picture with Minnie as soon as Mom crossed the finish line so Mom and I went and met him in line. We also got to meet up with some of our friends who were also running Dopey. We grabbed a quick group shot and then all parted ways for the day. We voted to head off to EPCOT for the day to celebrate our accomplishments.
TMSM is very excited to publish the “Racing Disney” runDisney series by Addie Clark and Catie Neal. Please keep an eye out for more of their amazing and informative articles! If you missed of the articles in this series make sure you check them athttps://www.themainstreetmouse.com/tag/racing-disney/
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