Show some respect!

 Do you ever feel like parked cars get more respect than us runners?  People don't think twice about driving around or leaving plenty of room between them and a parked car.  But when they see me running on the side of the road, they keep driving as though I'm not even there.  Not all drivers, but I'd say more than half.  Why is that?  When I see a runner on the side of the road, not only am I secretly cheering for them (Go, go, go!), but I make sure to give them plenty of space.  Why not?  Do you want to be that guy that takes out someone's Achilles tendon?

Disney's Wine and Dine Half-Marathon weekend

Well, let me just start out by saying "Amazing!"  If you know Disney, then you know they go all out on everything they do, races included!  My weekend started out at Epcot for the Wine and Dine half-marathon meet-up.  Basically what that is is every race Disney does, they have a pre-race meet-up somewhere to meet other runners, promote the race, etc.  Disney announced this meet-up less than a week before race weekend.  When they do, the first 40 people who respond are selected for the meet-up!  Keep in mind about 14,000 runners run this race, so 40 people isn't that many!  Imagine my excitement when I got the email telling me I was selected!  Eek!  We got to Epcot super early and met up with Jeff Galloway for a run through the park.  After they passed out runDisney shirts to all of us  for the photos of course!  It was so cool, running through Epcot before the park opened with other enthusiastic runners like me and Jeff, who was wearing jeans because he forgot warm-up pants!  After our 2-mile run, we met in Germany for a light breakfast and some guest speakers, which included the winner of the first 2 W&D races Anton Von Dyl, Tara Gidus  the runDisney nutritionist and a cooking demo from Chef Steff.  The most amazing baked spaghetti I've ever eaten! Then we did a bunch of group photos around the park.  As an added bonus, we got free tickets to Epcot, a gift card to spend there, and a fancy runDisney water bottle.  So fun.  I'll never forget it.    Fast-forward to Sunday night of the race.  We took the runners shuttle from our hotel to ESPN's Wide World of Sports where the start line was.  You've never seen a bigger pack of runners!  We mingled a while, danced to a DJ and warmed up while waiting to go into the chutes.  They had us corralled in 7 different groups so they could stagger the starts.  Can you imagine that many runners taking off at the SAME time?  Fireworks went off and here we go, we're running at Disney!  First, we ran through Animal Kingdom.  The Tree of Life and Expedition Everest are really cool at night!  All along the race route there were cool characters, if you wanted to stop for pics.   Next we headed to Hollywood Studios.  The highlight of that park was the Osborne Family light display.  If you don't know what that is, google it, so awesome at night!  Finally, we were headed to Epcot via the Boardwalk at Disney.  As we came into Epcot, the energy and the people cheering you on really pumped us all up.  I even sped up a bit at Mile 12.  Laser light show tunnel and the huge Epcot ball were a welcoming sight at the finish!  And as if it couldn't get any better, they gave us skinnygirl margarita bottles at the end!  Crazy!  I was worried about how I would feel running that late at night, being that I'm a morning runner.  But I felt awesome the whole run.  Keep in mind, this is not a race to PR at.  There are runners on your heels the whole race and you're running through theme parks.  It's not meant for that!  More importantly, it's a race to just enjoy.  Look around and just be in the moment.  You're running at Disney!  I would do it again in a heartbeat!