Saturday morning wake was EARLY!!! The race started at 6:15am, but we needed to be in our corrals by 5:45am. Everyone knows how much I LOVE mornings so getting up at 4am was a piece of cake, NOT!! But it had to be done, so 4am arrived much sooner than I would have liked and it was get ready and head to the start line. Even the sun was still sleeping at this time. I was mentally and physically ready, the only part I was concerned about was whether my knees would hold up because they had starting giving me a little trouble on a couple recent training runs.
The theme of the inaugural 10k was Alice and the Mad Hatter. This being my first real 10k race, when I registered I had no idea what my finishing time would be so I registered in the slowest time group. This turned out to be a frustrating mistake because I ended up in the last corral which meant that I started a good 25 minutes after the first group meaning I had that many more people in front of me. Many of them were walkers who liked to spread out along the route and caused all the runners to have to dodge around them. That part was the most frustrating part.
The route took us first through the streets of Anaheim down Disneyland Drive down to the Anaheim Convention Centre and right past our hotel. For a split second I thought about heading up to our room and going back to bed, but I had come all this way, trained for four months and at that point also really wanted the finishers' medal so I kept going. We ran up Harbour Blvd which was closed southbound and I could only imagine the frustration for the drivers having to reroute just for the race because this street is a very busy roadway. The route made its way into California Adventure park by Cars Land through a back entrance. I ran through California Adventure along Paradise Pier and around through Grizzly Peak and Hollywood Land before exiting through another back route and running along a service road towards Disneyland Park.
In Disneyland the route took me into Tomorrowland past the Star Wars Adventure ride up to Autopia and past the Matterhorn. We continued into a back service area for the park and all along the route had Disney employees lined up cheering us on. That was really encouraging especially at times when I wasn't sure I wanted to go on. It was especially helpful after mile 3 (half way) when my right knee started bugging me and I really started thinking about finishing it by walking. It helped me keep going as they random strangers were cheering on us other random strangers and yelling things like "way to go", "we're proud of you", etc. The route continued back into the regular part of the park and through Sleeping Beauty's castle. From there I ran through Frontierland and Critter Country before the route took me to Downtown Disney and to the finish line. By this time I was really getting to the point of wanting to be done. Just past mile 6 I saw Z standing at the side and that gave me the extra little bit of energy to go the last .2 miles. Just as I had the finish in sight, I saw Pluto at the finish and I managed to find a slight burst of speed and high fives him as I crossed. 1:19:30 was my official time.
I'm glad I did this run. It gave me a reason to start running and a goal to reach for. It sure was a neat experience running through the parks so early when they were closed to the public. There were several characters who were in the park during our run as well.....the ones I remember are Alice, Chip and Dale and one of the princesses.
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