Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon, Part 2

Sorry for the delay...now back to our regularly scheduled programming:

Saturday morning we got up and headed for a nice big breakfast at Kouzzina by Cat Cora. I loaded up on potatoes, waffles, and muffins. Yum!

Afterward we walked over to the Epcot back entrance (aka - International Gateway) and picked up our Finish Line Party tix. It was a relatively painless process, other than the long wait in line, and the fact that Disney had originally told everyone to pick up these tix at your hotel concierge, then the concierge sent us to the Guest Relations booth at Epcot, and the guy there said 'yeah...they're wrong, but I'll get the tickets for you anyways'. Grrr Disney...grrrr.

While at Epcot we took some pics of the finish line for that night!

We then headed back to the room for some rest. I would spend alllll day in bed. It was boring, and I kept trying to nap, but I was never successful. I was too amped up/nervous about the race!! It was the longest....day....ever.

Finally at 7pm I got dressed...

...and headed over to the buses to make my way to the start. Hubster and Twiu walked me to the bus, they took a pic, then I was off!

(I later heard there were outrageous lines for the buses to the start from Boardwalk - I must have gotten there just in time because I waited no more than 5 minutes.)

I got to ESPN Wide World of Sports and it was PACKED! Hubster had decided not to come to the start with me, and now I'm glad. It would have been difficult for him to see me start, and I heard the spectator buses took forever to get back to Epcot.
I just sat around, listened to the entertainment, hit up the port-o-lets, and waited for the start.

I may have snuck in a picture with Minnie before the start. :)

Right at 9:30p they started herding us towards the corrals. I had no previous race time to post, so I was placed in the last corral: D.

This was fine by me. I knew I was doing the Galloway walk/run for the race, so I didn't want to be in the way of any runners. I was probably about 200-300 people from the very back of the race (10,000 runners!). To give you a preview of the finish - I finished ahead of 3,500 runners....so I passed a LOT of people! lol

Here is the view from my starting point looking forward. There is a bend in the road and the start is REALLY far away.

 

After waiting for what felt like forever (thank goodness I had peed!!), I saw the fireworks announcing the start!!

(This is how far away we were! This was looking to my left)

Finally coming up on the Start:

And we were off!!

Stay tuned, the 3rd and final installment to come! (I'm stretching this out because I have no running to blog about. :( I haven't been a good runner girl...I've been so caught up with my new job. But I'm getting back on track this week. Need to get training for the Turkey Trot!)