What a great family running event! Our weekend started off with the Disneyland Half Marathon and 5k Health and Fitness expo which took place in the Disneyland Hotel Convention Center. We were thrilled to have our new "mini dot" polka dot athletic skirts available for customers who have been waiting for the red & white minnie mouse version of the skirt with black compression shorts underneath.

The expo was tons of fun - Christy, I and Coach Katri worked the booth in full Minnie flair, mini dot skirts, black tanks, topped off with the famous mouse ears (mine of black sequin variety). There was great energy and everyone was out having a great time at the "Greatest Place on Earth". This is the perfect marathon event to bring the whole family - disneyland theme parks for the kids (and kids at heart) and a 5k race on saturday and the 1/2 marathon Sunday morning - all on labour day weekend...so you get a whole extra day for recovery and family time!

3 full days on the feet working the skirt booth at the expo leaves the legs achy and heavy so we always take our traditional pre-race ice bath to help flush out the legs. After having a fabulous traditional pre-race dinner at McCormick & Scmicks (salmon and brown rice for me), we headed back to the hotel and ro-sham-boed (sp?) on who was going to get the first ice bath? A few buckets and shopping bags of ice later Christy found her way into a splish splash bath of icy bliss....aw - can you see the relaxation on her face? I only regret that these photos don't have sound attached - the noises that came from her as she sat into the water were something of a cross between a moan/shreak and lamaze type breathing. Hi-larious. .











Christy carefully lowered herself into the ice bath (left) while I took the traditional method of quick immersion = less suffering and plopped right in.

We had the baby with us in the hotel room, so Christy got to experience first hand the challenges of waking up 4x night with him. Is my 9 month old they only kid out there that doesn't sleep through the night yet? Our alarm clock went of at 4:15 a.m. -ouch. The Disneyland half was scheduled to start at 6:00 a.m. nice and early to avoid the crazy heat problems that they had the previous year. For those of you that haven't heard about it - they race coordinators "black flagged" the race and told the runners their times wouldn't count, their chips wouldn't work, etc. in an attempt to get people to chill out and go easy to avoid heat problems. Here's a few shots of us waiting for the bus (we caught the last bus btw - talk about cutting in close!)




















Christy & I waiting for the bus & Chisty & Katri (Tinkerbell) pre race.
We hopped off the bus and darted for the porta potties and then made our way to the first wave corral. We tried to get as close as we could to the front in hopes of getting good race positioning from the get go and have to do less maneuvering in the crowds. As we were nearing the start line the announcer "Rudy" called a runner up to the front by bib number, turns out it was his girlfriend and he brought her up with him on the platform and proposed...aw! It was so sweet, she said yes! Rudy does all the race announcing in the big socal & san diego running events and it was so great to hear his proposal. We kind of joked that we didn't think we were going to be starting the day off with tears. Thanks & Congrats to Rudy and his fiancee! She then hopped back into the pack as she was running the half marathon also (imagine how crazy that 13.1 miles must have been for her...euphoric!).

The race went really well except for the fact that I wanted to kill "Snow White" in the first few miles. Some clown was dressed up like snow white and veering back and forth in front of me at mile 2 and almost tripped me twice. I found myself yelling "Snow White - stop cutting people off!!" and finally made my way around him. I'm not sure if he understood english since he looked at me like I was crazy and continued his antics. So frustrating! I made a mental note not to get passed by Snow White again and held my pace. Here are my splits: 6:38, 6:30, 6:19, 6:36, 6:41, 6:36, 6:38, 6:38, 6:34, 6:26, 6:28, 7:02, 6:09. I finished in 1:26:40 - a pr for me which landed me 4th female and 1st place in my age group. I was a little disappointed that the overall awards only went 3 deep - they were the coolist gold mickey mouse trophies! But - how cool is my plaque with Micky on it!
After the race I ran back to the hotel and picked up baby in the jogger and ran back to the finish line, but unfortunately missed the award ceremony and photo op with Mickey. Christy collected my plaque for me - I told her she should have taken the photo with Mickey since nobody would really know the difference. All in all it was a really fun race, great flat course through California Adventure park, parts of Disneyland and around Annaheim Angels Stadium then back through Annaheim to Downtown Disney and the finish in front of the Disneyland Hotel. I will definitely do this race again and hopefully take the whole family next year! There were so many "mini dot" skirts in action - it was amazing and so much fun!

























Post race Haagen Daaz!