Live, Run, Grow

Well, here it is, the start of my marathon weekend recap!

Before I left work Thursday night my co-workers gave me a Good Luck card!  I was REALLY nervous about the race at the time so it meant a lot to know that they would all be back home cheering me on!

So, after agonizing over my packing for hours Thursday night, I was up bright and early Friday morning for my flight to Florida!

I took the Disney Magical Express to my resort and then decided to hop right on the bus over to the race expo at ESPN Wide World of Sports.  The expo for this race weekend was much bigger than the Wine & Dine expo, but it was also much more crowded!  I wasn’t really interested in shopping (just more stuff to carry home!) so I picked up my race packet and t-shirt, browsed the official race merchandise and was out of there pretty quickly.

WDW Marathon Expo

I wanted to take it pretty easy the days leading up to the marathon so I napped that afternoon and then met my mom and sister over at Epcot for dinner.  We ended the night walking around Downtown Disney for a couple of hours and finished with ice cream at the Ghiradelli shop!

Saturday we had an early breakfast at the Crystal Palace in the Magic Kingdom and on our way over on the monorail we saw the half marathon runners going by!  I filled up at the breakfast buffet with lots of protein and carbs (eggs and mickey mouse waffles – yum!) and took pictures with all of the Winnie the Pooh gang!

Me, Pooh, my sister Christina and my Mom

We did a few rides at the Magic Kingdom and when I had room to eat again I stopped over at Aloha Isle for a pre-race Dole Whip!

As I may have mentioned in a previous post my husband Jason was not coming down to Florida for the marathon because he had to work.  I knew this when I registered for the race so as much as I would have loved for him to be there I was fine with it…until Friday afternoon when he said he was going to end up being off on Sunday.  All Saturday morning while I was at the Magic Kingdom and he was at work, we were texting and calling back and forth debating whether it was worth it for him to fly down Saturday night and leave Sunday night just to see my race.  As soon as he said yes, that he would fly down for the day I was on the phone booking flights, my mom was on the phone trying to get us an extra hotel room and Jason was packing (literally meaning he stuck a toothbrush in a backpack since he was already at work and going to go straight to the airport from there!).

For the rest of the day I had a HUGE smile plastered across my face because I was just so excited to know that he was on his way down!

That afternoon (while Jason was getting on his flight to come down!) I met up with Lisa of Healthy Disney who had run the Walt Disney World Half Marathon that morning.  We chatted about her race that day, my race the next day and rode a ride quickly before I headed off to meet my family for dinner at Downtown Disney.

I went with the carb loading theory and had mozzarella stuffed rice balls and gnocchi with tomato basil sauce!  Right as we were finishing dinner Jason arrived!

While the rest of my family stayed at Downtown Disney for a bit I called it a night early and went back to our room to get my race stuff ready:

…and do some last minute stretching and foam rolling.  I showered, got in bed, read The Little Engine That Could  and had the lights out by 9pm to try to get some sleep!

Race day report here!