One Step Ahead of the Balloon Ladies...a Princess Half Report

[appleorchard]

This is my third foray into the wonderful world of trip report writing. My first two chronicled my experiences with my Disney-addicted grandchildren and their not necessarily Disney-addicted parents. You can find the links in my signature if you want. No pressure, though.

This one is just about me -- a 63 year old new runner who decided one day that it would be fun to run at Disney. With bad feet (surgically repaired, even). And a few too many pounds here and there. And no athletic ability whatsoever.

I'd started running to help me lose weight in May 2013. I did my first 5k in August, coming in, if not dead last, then very close, with a sterling time of around 48 minutes. A 15:36 minute mile, for those of you who are knowledgeable about such things.

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My first race--see how funny my hair gets when I run?

Then I lost my mind and decided to sign up for a Disney race. I KNEW I couldn't do the Princess half, so I signed up for the 5k. Just so I could could check "Disney race" off my bucket list.

Then I really went crazy and decided to do the 10K. Disney was sold out by that time so I signed up through a travel agency.

Now I was really on a roll.

So I decided, a few weeks later, to go all in. By this time, not even the travel agencies had spots left for the Princess Half. So I went through one of the charities, which meant I had to beg friends and family to donate to me.

In leiu of Christmas and birthday presents.

Which they did.

So I was signed up for all three races. All by myself. With no more DVC points to fund my trip, due to having gone on a ridiculous number of Disney trips in the last year.

So I made a reservation (nervously, to say the least) at Pop. A value. I never thought I would do such a thing, but there it was.

So this is my story of running three Disney races, staying at a value hotel and going solo for the first time.

Hope you'll join me!

 

[appleorchard]

I've struggled with weight all my life. I even remember worrying about weight as a kid, when I actually had no weight to lose. I've spent my entire life going up and down the scale, over a 60 pound range. I literally have clothes in my closet ranging from size 5 to size 18.

I went on yet another weight losing mission in August 2012, inspired by a dinner with one of my friends where we lamented -- over the Cracker Barrel biscuits -- that we were going to be too old to lose weight soon. Over the next 8 months I tried hypnosis, virtual gastric bypass (a sub-branch of the hypnosis thing, B-12 injections, prescribed diet pills, sheer willpower and modified eating programs.

They all worked, to some extent. By May 2013 I'd lost around 35 pounds. I still wanted to lose another 20 and even more than that, I didn't want to gain them back.

For the millionth time.

In October, we'd been at Disney at the same time as the ToT 10 miler. I admired someone's tech shirt and thought to myself,

"I want one of those shirts."

Of course, I knew the only way to get one was to run a Disney race. At the time, I didn't realize I would get the shirt merely by forking over the registration fee and showing up at the Expo to collect the shirt. If I'd known that at the time, my story might have had a very different ending.

And I'd still have all my original toenails.

But at the time, I thought I would actually have to run -- and finish -- the race to get a cool shirt. So I set out on a journey to someday, somehow, get my very own Disney shirt.

Since everyone I knew was using the Couch to 5k program to start running, I obediently followed the crowd and downloaded the app to my phone. I got up one morning, put on my clunky overpronator shoes with my pricy orthotics and headed out the door.

I nearly died that day.

Who knew 30 minutes could drag on for so long? At the end of the extremely brief "run" sections, I felt like I was going to fall down in the middle of the street. Or that my legs were going to fall off.

Getting hit by a car seemed like a good way to end this misery. And give me an excuse not to do this. Because once you put something like this on your Facebook page, you've got to carry it through, you know.

Or risk social embarrassment, which I face often enough already.

But after the first week or so, I discovered the most amazing thing.

I was enjoying this.

I even went to the running store and purchased some real running shoes.

Not THAT was a social embarrassment for an old, overweight, slow sort-of-runner. There's nothing like calling yourself a runner to a young kid who definitely looks like a runner when you don't resemble one in the slightest.

It took me some trial and error to realize that the first shoes I bought probably weren't the right ones for me.

And that the walk-run program didn't really work for me either. I'm better off just trudging along at my plodding pace than stopping and going all the time. I tend to lose my momentum in the stopping periods.

By the time I starting signing up for the Princess races (one at a time, thereby negating my chance at getting the Glass Slipper medal -- but I didn't even know about that at the time) I had lost another 15 pounds, for a total of 50. I had done my first 5k. And I was ready to start training for the big time.

 

[poisonapple_PRINCESS]

Good for you!!! Can't wait to hear all about the rest of your trip! I'm trying to motivate myself to run with Disney races too! (I've been trying to motivate myself for awhile though lol)