Once I ran in the 2019 runDisney Marathon Weekend and tackled the 10K and Half Marathon, I just couldn’t stop myself from expanding my involvement in the 2019 runDisney Princess Half Marathon weekend. If you are new to runDisney events, you should definitely take a look at my first timer experience articles. You can find them below.
What was I Thinking?
Well if you read my article about my 2019 runDisney Marathon Weekend event, you know that although I had lots of doubts I was able to participate in both the 10K and Half Marathon events and even set personal bests for both event. This gave me A TON OF CONFIDENCE! I thought that I was a real runner.
So what do you do when you run … run some more. Although the 2019 runDisney Princess Half Marathon was all full when I checked last, I decided to just “go check” and to my surprise some challenge registrations had opened up. So what did I do? Register, Register, Register.
Minutes after I finished the registration and the excitement wore off, I realized “What was I thinking?” I just signed up to run a 5K on Friday, 10K on Saturday and a Half Marathon on Sunday. That was going to be 22.5 miles over three days. I must be crazy.
2019 runDisney Princess Half Marathon Weekend
When the next event rolled around, I had all kinds of plans. Take it easy on the 5K and just walk with my wife who really didn’t want to go any faster than a brisk walk. On the 10K take a casual pace and save as much energy for the Half Marathon which is where I wanted to set a new personal best.
Plans are great, until they meet your family. The 5K went as planned, great, but then we stayed in the parks until 10 PM because everyone else didn’t need to run the next day and they wanted to see the fireworks. Bad idea. Going to bed at 11:30 PM and then getting up at 3:30 AM to go run even a 10K is not enough sleep. Besides not getting enough sleep, there was a weather adviser for heat. It was hotter than usual for February in Florida, which didn’t make good conditions for personal bests. Well, the 10K didn’t go as well, it took me longer than my personal best and I was exhausted. Between the lack of sleep and the heat, I was dead.
I tried to convince everyone to retire early, but we still stayed in the parks all day until about 9 PM. I got a little more sleep, but not enough. The Half Marathon went worse than the 10K. Sleep and heat were a killer and I finished almost 20 minutes later than my personal best.
There were some great lessons learned during this event, what lessons have you learned when traveling with family and running events? Share in the comments below.
