pre-race requirements

Thanks to everyone for the congratulatory tweets, messages, and comments from yesterday!

You didn’t think you were going to get the full race recap this morning didn’t you? I’m sorry if you did – you might just have to wait until tomorrow for that one! I have to first tell you about all of the things I had to do in preparation for the race – you know, all the important stuff.

On Thursday, my mom and I went to the packet pick up at ESPN World of Sports complex. The only problem I had with the entire race weekend was how difficult it was to get to ESP World. Only a select few resort buses went there, which meant you had to take a bus to a different resort (and if you were not already at the parks when you decided you wanted to go, that meant taking two buses to get to the resort) and then another bus to get to ESPN World. Talk about a pain in the butt.

After hearing about the roundabout way we had to travel for the packet pick up, I wanted to skip out on it on Thursday and just go on Friday. I’m glad my mom talked me out of that one though – I heard the expo was absolutely crazy on Friday!

The packet pick up was so organized. Since there were multiple races going on this weekend (5k, half, and full), there were separate lines for each one of the races.

Once you picked up your race bib, you were instructed to go activate your “B Tag”, which is a device used on the back of your race bib to track your times. Typically races use tags that attach to your shoe, but using the B Tag is much easier since you don’t actually have to do anything (or potentially forget it!). It was easy to activate it – you just had to walk through a section that was hooked up to a computer and scanning device. Easy as pie!

Once I got my bib, we had to go into a completely different building to get the shirts and swag bags, which I thought was kind of weird. Why not just give it all to us at once? I know why – they wanted everyone to go to the expo!

We only stayed in the expo for a little while because it was pretty packed, but we couldn’t leave without taking a cheesy picture by the race sign!

Note to self: Next time, remember that there ARE safety pins in the swag bags, so one should not have to wake up in panic that you don’t have safety pins.

The other thing I had to do before the race was carb up!

On Friday night, I met up with a few other bloggers/readers for a fun dinner at Wolfgang Puck Cafe – all organized by the lovely Katy. I have been wanting to meet Katy for some time now since I have followed her since the beginning of her blog – well over a year!

It was quite a fun dinner, and I have to say that Disney is so wonderful about catering to people who have dietary restrictions (another full post to come about this!). They had pasta on their menu, which could be modified to a gluten free dish. However, the gluten was replaced with corn flour which meant I couldn’t eat it. They sent a chef out to explain the situation for me, which was so nice of them to do. I actually didn’t mind though – I was trying to decide between sushi and pasta and couldn’t make the decision. Thankfully, they made the decision for me!

I ordered two vegetable rolls and was even served a side of tamari (gluten free soy sauce). I was more than happy to painfully use my chop sticks (anyone else horrible at using them?) and dip away into a sodium stupor.

The only other thing I had to do was try to sleep (meh, not so great) and eat breakfast at 2:30 in the morning for race day – yikes!

I can’t wait to share with you the specifics about the actual race! I’m heading home this morning, and while I’m sad my vacation has come to an end, I am more than happy to get back to my normal routine – except that whole work thing. Has it been two weeks already?

Tagged as: disney half, disney world, disney world half marathon, race, race expo, running, travel