Well what a day!

Being a race day, I was up just before 4am; because Disneyland is so compact, we could just walk to the start line from our hotel, no need to wait for buses etc, which meant we could afford that extra half an hours sleep. Today was the 10k, and we were in corral B, but it was very noticeable how fewer people were taking part in this race compared to last weeks.

We got off about 7 minutes after the first group, and it was a really good race! The first mile and a half was done on the perimeter of the Disneyland park, before we weaved in and out of backstage, then across to California Adventure after about 3 miles. Everything was still lit up as it was just before sunrise – which was when we hit about 4-5 miles – and the characters were awesome: BB-8, Stormtroopers and Jango Fett to name a few! We finished in 1:15, which isn’t our fastest (1:03) but considering stopping for photos etc it’s pretty damn close!

Medals and snack boxes acquired, we walked back to the hotel for a quick recover, then into California Adventure via the Grand Californian Hotel to beat the crowds, and straight to Toy Story Midway Mania. The park had only just opened so we only waited about 15 minutes, and afterwards we did Mickey’s Fun Wheel and Ariel’s Undersea Adventure, both of which had less than a 5 minute wait. In need of energy, we took another walk down Radiator Springs, and grabbed food at the Cozy Cone Motel; I had a bacon mac’n’cheese bread cone (YES) and Dad had a pretzel twist, then we sat at Flo’s V8 Cafe and watched the world – and the cars! – go by for a little while. We were taking things easy today after all!

Onwards, and we slowly walked around the park we had been running through a few hours earlier, before deciding to head back to the RunDisney expo for a last look around, then caught the monorail from Downtown Disney into the Disneyland park. First up was another performance of Mickey and the Magical Map, then back across to Royal Theatre to catch the Tangled show, but the times had been changed and the showing we had hoped to see wasn’t on, so once again we postponed seeing it, and feeling a little drained, decided to go back to the hotel for a swim and chill session. The Paradise Pier Hotel has a rooftop pool and hot tub – ok it’s only on the roof of the third floor but that still counts right? – and it was just what we needed for our achey legs.

After suitable recovery time, we once again set off for California Adventure, first of all hoping to get another ride on Radiator Springs Racers, but it was having some technical issues, so it was California Screamin’ instead! Finally hoping to catch the Pixar Play Parade, we set up camp on the parade route across from Paradise Pier nice and early so that we could sit and rest our legs for a while. I know I’ve said this about basically every show and parade we’ve watched this trip, but once again I was blown away! There were bugs, toys, cars, bubbles.. It was so much fun!

After the parade it was carb-loading time, so spaghetti and meatballs at Boardwalk Pizza and Pasta hit the spot just right. Now dark out, we were really excited to go back over to Cars Land to see it all properly lit up in all its neon glory before heading back to the hotel for an early night of good solid rest.

Tomorrow is our last race, eeek!