Tag Archives: Run Disney

Walt Disney World Day 3

So I’m now running a day behind, but hey ho!

Thursday morning we headed into Magic Kingdom around about opening time, and as we walked into the park Chip and Dale were just heading out to meet, so as they had no queue yet, we were basically the first people to meet them, then we walked towards Frontierland and rode Big Thunder Mountain, then picked up some breakfast and hit up Its A Small World.

From there, we went back to Main Street so Chelsea could get a Starbucks and Sarah could get a balloon, and then visited the purple wall for some quick pics for the ‘gram. Chelsea and Sammy had fastpasses for Seven Dwarfs Mine Train, so they went off to do that and Sarah and I just hung out at the castle which is where they met us and we went over to Space Mountain for another fastpass.

A quick snack and some shops later, Sarah left to nip back to the hotel for a jacket and the rest of us had a quick wander through Fantasyland and then rode Big Thunder one more time, this time with a fastpass, and then left the park, meeting Sarah on the way out, and got the bus to Art of Animation.

The bus to AoA broke down, so we ended up having to be transferred onto a new bus, but it didn’t take too long for that to be sorted! We had some food at the resort and an explore, and then we got an Uber to ESPN Wide World of Sports for the RunDisney expo where we picked up our race bibs and shopped the merch for the race weekend, then grabbed another Uber to Hollywood Studios, which is where we finished up the night watching Fantasmic before going back to get a good nights sleep in before the 10k!

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Photos to Take With your RunDisney Medals

Maintaining your fitness, a sense of achievement, or pushing your limits; anyone might think these are the reasons to participate in a RunDisney event. Sure, there’s an aspect of this in every race, but really its all about the medal at the finish line, and I’m definitely not the only Disney runner who thinks this.

If you’ve never seen a RunDisney medal before, let me tell you they are every bit as awesome as you’d expect them to be and more. For starters, they’re huge, and weigh a fair bit, but as well as they’re they are always so detailed and well themed, and well worth however miles you just sweated for.

For many, the completion of the race might be the end of the event in your eyes, but you’re gonna want to document everything perfectly, and in the hours and days after your race, medal photos suddenly become a priority. With 5 RunDisney weekends under my belt, I have perfected the art of the medal photos, and if anyone’s about to take part in their first event, here’s the definitive list of photos that you’re gonna want to take.

1. A finish line medal selfie

A volunteer has just hung that glorious medal around your neck and you’re stumbling towards the water table but what you really need to do is document that finishing moment with a good ol’ sweaty selfie!

2. A photo with the finishing board

Once you’ve picked up your free bottles of water and Powerade and grabbed your food box, the next stop before reuniting with your friends and family at the end of the race is to get that official RunDisney board photo.

3. A photo of your weekend medal collection

If you’ve run more than one race, or completed a challenge, be sure to get a photo wearing all of those medals at the same time, even if its too heavy for you to wear them all all day!

4. A photo in front of the castle

Sometimes this shot needs a helping hand of someone to hold the medal while you get the position of the photo just right, but its a classic!

5. A photo with the character on the medal

If you’re medal is themed based on a certain character, as so many are, be sure to go and see them to show off! They absolutely love seeing medals!

6. A photo in a themed location

If you’re in a park that has an area theme that matches your medal, grab a photo there too!

7. Your medal display at home

However you hang your medals at home, take a photo after every new medal has been added!

My next RunDisney event will be Paris in September when I’ll be running the 10K and half marathon for the inaugural Bibbidi Bobbidi Challenge and also getting my second Castle to Chateau challenge medal! Who will I be seeing there?

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February Disney Trip Day 3

So after our crazy early night last night, we ended up awake super early this morning. Typical.Our plans for the morning were to hit the RunDisney expo so I could get my bib and tshirts, so we had a fairly chilled morning at the hotel, grabbed some breakfast there and jumped on a transportation bus to the ESPN centre. Because Sarah had never been to an expo before, I was pretty excited for her to see what they were really like.


We got my bib and race shirts, and collected the pre-ordered pin I got for Sarah and my event jacket, then got stuck into the official merchandise, before getting into the 40 minute queue to pay. Yes, 40 minutes.. We also had a quick look around the main expo hall, but with fastpass commitments looming, jumped on a bus back to the hotel so I could dump my stuff, then hopped on another to Epcot.

Our only fastpass of the day was for Soarin’, a ride I haven’t done here since 2014 as it was being refurbished last year, and the new update is incredible! Honestly if you do no other ride in Epcot, do this.

 

Having seen that she meets in the French Pavilion on the World Showcase, I decided to bring my Aurora themed outfit forward, so we dashed from Soarin’ to the 2:30 meet, and while we were in the queue we overheard rumours that Belle would also be out in her blue dress, so after Aurora we got in the mystery line to meet Belle. She was super lovely, and it was my first time meeting her in her blue village dress, and another princess off the list!

Onwards, we grabbed a Starbucks and jumped onto a monorail across to the Magic Kingdom, then a bus across to Fort Wilderness for Mickey’s Backyard BBQ..


You guys, I cannot put into words how much fun Backyard BBQ was. There will be a full review in the coming weeks, but OH MY GOSH. There was amazing food, incredible entertainment and we just had the best time dancing with Mickey and the gang! 100/10 would recommend, and yes, that is 100 and not a typo.

From Fort Wilderness, we got the bus back to the Magic Kingdom, rejoiced at the park being much quieter than Tuesday, and took a good spot to watch Once Upon a Time and Wishes. The whole area between the partners statue and castle was sat down which was amazing. That was, until about 5 minutes before it was due to start, when the whole front of the audience decided to stand up. Ugh. We actually ended up leaving midway through in order to make our fastpass for Buzz, but having already watched it this trip and knowing we’ll see it again, it wasn’t really a problem.

After Buzz, we had our last fastpass of the day at Haunted Mansion, then as we still had 10 minutes til park close, we decided to run over and get on Big Thunder Mountain because the queue was pretty short, plus I love riding Big Thunder in the dark – it just seems to make it more fun!


Now past park close, we walked through a fairly empty Liberty Square back to the castle, and decided to hang out until Main Street emptied out a bit to get some photos in front of a clear castle, and we managed to sneak a photo shoot with one of the remaining Photopass photographers on Main Street. We eventually left the park about 11pm – an hour after park close – and got back to the hotel about 11.40, now pretty wiped and ready for a good nights sleep!

Today:

– Characters met: 7

– Total steps: 20,226

– Total distance: 8.46 miles

Tomorrow we’ll be in Animal Kingdom!

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My RunDisney Princess Weekend Outfits

This time next week, I will be at the airport getting ready to leave for Florida!!!!! I’m a teeny bit excited, can you tell?

And while this trip is a holiday for the most part, it also involves me taking part in the RunDisney Princess Half Marathon weekend’s Glass Slipper Challenge – the Princess 10K on Saturday 25th and the Princess Half Marathon on Sunday 27th. Do you know what that means? TWO RACE OUTFITS.

I’m putting a lot more effort into my costumes this year, and I’ve been grinding away at my sewing machine to create two outfits that I’m super proud of!

Nala RunDisney costume

I spent a lot of time thinking about what princesses I wanted to represent in the races, and after much consideration, I figured I’d give some exposure to an underrated, non-human princess – Nala from The Lion King. The skirt and ears are my own creations, and I’m completing the look with a performance t-shirt from AWDis Cool, the cutest ‘Lion in Training’ socks, which I was given in the Disney Halloween gift exchange, and my RunDisney New Balance trainers which I bought last year. This will be my costume for the 10K!

Chip RunDisney costume

If you’ve seen my other trip outfit posts, you’ll see that Chip is a bit of a running theme – no pun intended. Beauty and the Beast is definitely one of my favourite princess movies, but I didn’t really want to do Belle, so I opted for my next favourite character. I planned this ages before the medal designs were released, so I was SO HAPPY when I discovered that the whole weekend is going to be BatB themed, making this costume even more relevant! When it comes to half marathons, I’m a bit fussier about what I wear, so I kept it simple with another handmade skirt, and a white performance t-shirt, plus my yellow running belt for storing my phone, and my New Balances.

I can’t wait to kick off another year of racing!

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RunDisney Paris Trip – Day 2 and Half Marathon!

The great thing about racing in Disneyland Paris is that the starts aren’t quite as stupidly early as in the states; today we were up at 5.15am.


Pre-race breakfast was provided at the hotel, but I only had a banana and bowl of dry Frosties with some juice because the options were basically fruit and cereal! We headed to the race area and got into our corral, C, about 45 minutes before the race was due to start, but due to a hold up on the course the whole start of the race was delayed, meaning it was about 7.45 before we’d actually crossed the start line, by which time we were quite cold and I was already hungry again, oops..


The race took a different route through the parks to the 5K the previous day which was nice as it meant we didn’t know what to expect, and they also had completely different characters around – I think the only repeat I saw was Spiderman. I stopped for photos with Chip and Dale who were hanging in the Studios park, and also Robin Hood in Disneyland, but it was nice to see the other characters around – Alice, Captain America, Darth Vader – and Cinderella and Prince Charming were in Fantasyland with one of the floats from Disney Magic on Parade. We left the parks at about 5/6K and did quite a bit of backstage before hitting the roads of the surrounding towns. It was over 16K before we were back in the official Disney area, where we finished the race running through hotels Santa Fe and Cheyenne, and then around the lake, through Disney Village and a final loop of backstage to the finish line! Despite taking things really easy due to my foot injury from earlier in the week, we still finished in a really respectable time of about 3 hours, and were met at the finish line by Mickey and Minnie which was perfect, even if Mickey was taken away from me just as I went in for a photo!

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Disneyland Pairs Sequoia Lodge

Once we’d got our race medal and Castle to Chateau medal, and grabbed our food bags, it was time to find Mum and Hannah and slowly make our way back to the hotel to grab a proper breakfast; the Disney hotels had extended breakfast hours for runners. Super quick rest and shower before we packed up the room, dropped the bags off in the car and as we made our way back towards the park the heavens opened and the rain began to pour! Because of this, we opted to get the bus to the parks, and ran straight through to Walt Disney Studios Park for the 12.50pm performance of Mickey and the Magician. I’d really been looking forward to seeing this, and it was a welcome sit down and break from the rain. I enjoyed the show, but personally felt a bit let down by a slightly less than perfect Elsa who hit a few bum notes, but was really impressed with the Lion King scene.

 

With very little time left before needing to leave, and empty tummies, we left Studios and Dad and Hannah went to get us a table at the Rainforest Cafe, while I shot back into the Disneyland Park with Mum to get some albeit rainy photos of my medals by the castle, and pick up a few gifts for family before we joined back up for lunch. Still on a bit of a carb fest, I had Rasta Pasta which was AMAZING, and they were doing 15% discount for runners which was a nice surprise! Few last bits bought from the Village, then back to the car to make the drive back to the Eurotunnel!

See you next time, Disneyland Paris!

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RunDisney Paris Trip – Day 1 and 5K!

And I’m blogging yet another Disney trip! I’m gonna do a separate post on the Run Disney pasta party, which was technically our first day in the parks, so I’m gonna start with Saturday.


Of course the day started with the Run Disney 5K. We were in corral B, and running as a whole family (Mum and Hannah included), it was a gentle pace but that was exactly what I needed following my foot injury earlier in the week. The course was perfect, very much park based with just a small amount of backstage, and packed with characters and photo ops. We finished in around 45 minutes, and were greeted at the finish line by Donald, Daisy and Pluto which was so nice – I’ve never met characters at a finish line before!

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Disneyland Paris Phantom Manor

Disneyland Paris Casey's Corner

After walking back to the hotel, grabbing breakfast and having showers and a bit of rest, we headed into the Disneyland Park just after 10am opening. First on the agenda was Pirates of the Caribbean, followed by Phantom Manor. The park’s Halloween decorations are just creeping out so I’m in my element getting lots of photos!
We grabbed a drink at Casey’s Corner and wandered the shops for a little while while waiting for my sister to arrive in the park having had a post-race nap, and then went for lunch at Cafe Hyperion. Full of nuggets, next stop was Its a Small World, which actually had a pretty long queue, but as I haven’t done it on my last two trips it needed to be done! Then it was time for our Fastpasses for Buzz, so we did that, then went and got an ice cream from Gibson Girl, before deciding to do a round trip on the Disneyland Railroad.

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As the wait for the train was pretty long, by the time we’d done the full circuit it was gone 5pm, and my parents and sister headed to the Disneyland Hotel to meet a friend of my mum, while I stayed in the parks to watch Magic on Parade. I had originally planned on watching it from near the start of the route, but ended up outside City Hall as it was already getting pretty busy and I found a decent spot.

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Disneyland Paris Its a Small World

After the parade, I met up with the lovely Gaetane to shoot my Its a Small World outfit (stay tuned for this!); it was really cool to get to meet her and chat Disney for a little while, then we parted ways as I reunited with the family for dinner at Bistrot Chez Remy – cos where else would you celebrate a Ratatouille themed 5K?!

Bistrot Chez Remy

Full of fuel, it was back to the hotel for rest and an early night before the half marathon the following morning!

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More Disney Plans!

I very much doubt that me announcing more Disney trips is much of a shock to my regular readers anymore, but I just love sharing my plans with everyone!

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Now I’ve already shared my big plans for this year, including Shanghai, Hong Kong and Disneyland Paris, and with this year already packed with magic, I’m now starting to sort my 2017 adventures!

Brace yourselves.

I have already booked Walt Disney World for February with the lovely Sarah from Belle’s Moments, eek! We’re going to be staying at Port Orleans Riverside for 10 days to coincide with the Princess Half Marathon weekend, where I’m hoping to be doing the Glass Slipper Challenge – 10K Saturday and half marathon Sunday! I say hoping because race registration doesn’t actually open until next month, which is actually when I’ll be in China so fingers crossed I can get it sorted ok! So that’s one trip down..

Keeping on the race theme, in May I’m hoping to be able to go out to Disneyland for the Tinkerbell Half weekend, so that I can run the Pixie Dust challenge, and also qualify for my Pink Coast to Coast medal – fingers crossed that stays on into 2017! Right now nothing for this trip is planned; my parents might join me but it all depends on their plans for the year, but I’d love to go out for a week and maybe do Universal Studios out in LA too!

That’s it, right? NOPE

Hello September, hello Disney Cruise Line booking! Once again I’ve booked with Sarah for the 7 night Mediterranean trip, and what’s even more exciting than going with her is that another one of my absolute favourite people is booked on the same cruise with her family, so its going to be the most fun! I have done a cruise before, but not a Disney cruise and I think there’s gonna be a stark comparison between my previous cruise memories and this one! Sarah is a Disney cruise pro, so I’m hoping she’s going to show me the ropes, and I’m really interested in all of the stops we’ll be making on the way!

Three big trips, yay!

I also have my Disneyland Paris annual pass now, so I’m hoping to visit there a few more times this year and next, including the Halloween Soiree this year!

EEEEEKKK °o°

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My RunDisney Bucket List

Its safe to say that having run four races already this year, and two more booked for September – plus I’m already planning my 2017 events! – I’m pretty hooked on RunDisney. Yeah, I’m not even sorry..

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So I thought I’d write my ultimate RunDisney bucket list so I’ve got something to aim for in the next few years, yay!

Race Events:

  • Walt Disney World Marathon weekend
    • 5K – 2016
    • 10K 2019
    • Half Marathon – 2016
    • Marathon 2019
    • Goofy Challenge
    • Dopey Challenge
  • Star Wars Half Marathon weekend – Light Side (Disneyland)
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon – Rebel Challenge completed 2016!
  • Princess Half Marathon weekend
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon – Glass Slipper Challenge 2017 done!
  • Star Wars Half Marathon weekend – Dark Side (Walt Disney World)
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon
  • Tinkerbell Half Marathon weekend
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon – Pixie Dust Challenge 2017, done!
  • Disneyland Half Marathon weekend
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon
  • Disneyland Paris
    • 5K – 2016 done!
    • 10K – 2017 done!
    • Half Marathon – 2016 done!
    • 31K Challenge – 2017
    • 36K Challenge – goal for 2019
  • Wine and Dine Half Marathon weekend
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon
  • Super Heroes Half Marathon weekend
    • 5K
    • 10K
    • Half Marathon
  • Castaway Cay 5K

Extra Magic:

  • Coast to Coast Challenge – gained January 2016
  • Castle to Chateau Challenge – September 2016!
  • Pink Coast to Coast Challenge – gained 2017!
  • Castaway Cay Challenge – January 2019
  • Kessel Run Challenge
  • Pasta in the Park Party
  • Post-race breakfast
  • Participate in an inaugural race – Disneyland Paris 2016!

Can you tick off any of these?

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10 Things to Know Before Your First RunDisney Event

You’ve got a RunDisney event on your bucket list, or maybe you’ve signed up for your first one this year; you might want to read this..

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Don’t expect a PB

You can have every intention to go out and smash it on the day, but as soon as you see how beautiful the castle is all lit up, or that perfect sunrise shot you just have to take, not to mention all those great characters along the route, you’re gonna start caring less about your race time and more about having a good time! Now this doesn’t mean you won’t get one – I did! – but just don’t stress over it, ok?

Don’t stress over organisation

RunDisney events are impeccably organised, so do not stress yourself for a second about anything. Hakuna Matata.

Check costume rules

Yes yes yes to dressing up, but be sure to double check those guidelines, the last thing you want on race day is to be told that the outfit you carefully coordinated isn’t allowed.

Also please don’t be that person who waits until race day to wear their costume for the first time, rookie rookie mistake..

Pick up your participant t-shirts before forking out on merch

Instead of going straight for the official merchandise, go and grab your race packet – we thought our participant shirts were pretty awesome, so didn’t feel the need to buy all the other shirts on offer. Yay happy credit card!

Join the New Balance virtual queue

You’ve seen those shiny new releases and you just can’t wait to get yourself a pair, but silly as it sounds, sometimes you can’t just walk up to the booth and ask for a pair. New Balance set up a virtual queue, whereby you enter your details early in the day, then when it’s your turn, head on down to the desk and you’re golden!

If you’re doing a longer distance, there will be more than just parks

So the longer the distance, the more park you get to see, which is great, but it does also mean you’re gonna see a lot more of backstage and highways. In WDW for example, the 5k and 10ks generally only feature Epcot, while the half includes the Magic Kingdom, but there’s a whole lotta road between the two! Now the lovely RunDisney team try really hard to put on great entertainment on these stretches, but there just isn’t the same scenery going on!

There are early mornings involved

3am, just sayin’..

You are not alone

This works on many levels. 1) Chances are you will be running with at least 10,000 other runners, possibly up to 25,000. Believe it or not though, you probably won’t feel too crowded! 2) Most other runners are really nice and supportive, whether they’re just chatting to you as you go or counselling you as you hit the wall; complete strangers may just become your best friend for a few miles. 3) There are a few runners who can spoil it, those who can’t share their race nicely. They might shove past you because you’re not going ‘at their pace’, they might tut and groan; ignore them, you’re having a way better time than they are.

Don’t feel silly wearing your medals to the parks!

Everyone does it, and you’ll get all sorts of people congratulating you, asking questions, sharing stories etc, it’s a lot of fun. And if you run more than one race, multiple medals is 100% acceptable.

Races are totally walker friendly

Don’t be worried if you don’t think you can run the whole course non-stop, you’ll find the majority of people taking regular walking intervals – some as early as 100m into the race! Just be considerate and move to the side so others can pass you.

You’re gonna have an awesome time, I promise you, so just go for it! The goodies are worth every second!

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Friday Favourite Five – RunDisney Moments

Nothing brings me back to normality more than a regular blogging series, and 2016 welcomes the return of FFF!

If you’re a new reader, every Friday I choose five of my favourite things of a certain topic, simple! Oh, and welcome!

I’m still reeling from my Disney trip, and with four RunDisney races under my belt, I’m choosing my favourite moments from those experiences!

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1. The first time we entered Epcot on our first race

All of the races start outside of the parks, so that first step from backstage into the actual parks is pretty special. On our first race, the 5k, we race into Mexico on the World Showcase and the lake was lit all around with torches and all the countries were lit and it was just kinda surreal!

2. Running down Main Street USA

During the WDW half marathon, we got to run down the middle of Main Street, with crowds cheering us on as we headed towards the castle.

3. This selfie

If you read my post on the WDW half, you’ll know I really struggled with a chest infection the whole way round, so seeing this little guy and getting a hug and a selfie at the 7 mile mark was really helpful!

4. The Star Wars 10K

This was actually our favourite race; lame as it sounds, it was just all really good! We ran a good pace, it was a good course, we got to see a load of the parks, BB-8 was there..

5. The three medal finish line

Finishing the Star Wars half marathon sealed our completion of not only that race, but also Rebel Challenge AND Coast to Coast, meaning we received all 3 medals then and there. It was everything we had worked for and it was 100% worth it.

Have you ever run a Disney race? Would you?

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My Disney Trip Haul!

I’m home, I’m jet-lagged, and something I always hate about coming home from holidays is the dreaded unpacking of the suitcase, am I right?

What made it a little more bearable for me today though was knowing that my case was full of Disney goodies, and who doesn’t love a good haul post?!

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Now a fair amount of this is RunDisney stuff, so that’s where I’ll begin!

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To start off, our medals and race shirts were all included in the entry fee; for the 5k it was just a regular cotton t-shirt, and the 10k, 2 halfs and Rebel Challenge shirts were all long sleeved performance tops. The medals are all 100% awesome, and pretty chunky – weighing just under a kilo for all six!

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As well as our free shirts, we picked up a few extra goodies at the RunDisney expos. To surprise Dad, I had pre-ordered the limited edition WDW race weekend jackets for both of us, and we both ended up wearing them for the majority of the rest of our trip because they were so nice and warm! We also got a Coast to Coast shirt each, because you only get a medal for completing it, and also the Rebel Challenge ‘I did it!’ t-shirts, which also had a map of the courses we ran on the back, then I got a couple of headbands – two WDW half marathon ones and a Rebel Challenge.

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If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that I was pretty desperate for a pair of the limited release New Balance trainers, so of course I was super psyched to get my hands on a pair of the Red Carpet Minnie Mouse ones, which also came with a pair of gold shoelaces and clip on bows.

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I was pretty restrained in only buying two mugs, (I had my eye on quite a few!) but Chip was top on my list, and I fell in love with the pastel Disneyland beauty. Obviously I bought the first Cogsworth I found because I had to bring him home with me, although I discovered mine is missing his pendulum yesterday when I unwrapped him, so fingers crossed the lovely Disney team with magic up a new one for me!

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I’m a huge collector of Vinylmations, and somehow came home with 9, oops! I did get two of them at Disney’s Character Warehouse, the outlet store, for only $3 each so that was a bonus.

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Isn’t my new BB-8 dress amazing?! Its by Her Universe, but was sold all over the parks and Disney Springs, and I’m obsessed. I actually wore it to Hollywood Studios one day, and bumped into some Stormtroopers, totally panicked and said ‘this isn’t the droid you’re looking for’..

And lastly, I was really lucky to finally meet the lovely Maggie from Elephant and Mouse, who was staying in the same resort as us and was kind enough to meet me with an order of ears so I didn’t have to pay international shipping! I got two different fluffy Donald Duck pairs, and a pretty purple galaxy pair. She makes incredible ears, so go and visit her Etsy shop here!

Oh, and not forgetting this cutie!

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We came home with a family set!

Are you heading to Disney anytime soon?

°o°

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Disneyland Day 4 – Star Wars Half!

Wow..

All of our races are over; a year of training and it all came down to today. Last race, last half marathon, completion of Rebel Challenge and Coast to Coast.

How did it go? Unbelievable. No longer subject to that nasty chest infection that held me back last week, we smashed it out of the park, starting and maintaining an astonishing pace – about 6:40/km. The course started very similarly to yesterday’s 10k through the parks, then after after about 4.5 miles we took to the streets of Anaheim, which was a lot of nice and flat, straight roads lined with high school cheerleaders, marching bands and some major Star Wars fans and cosplayers. It was electric! As for our time, would you believe we set a PB?! We crossed in about 2:39 (still waiting on chip time though), beating our previous PB by about a minute, insane!

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We also got the fun of not only collecting our half medals, but our Rebel Challenge and Coast to Coast, both of which are awesome, so we now have a total of 6 medals from this trip! Pooped, it was back to the hotel to eat, bath and generally recover.

After a solid amount of rest time, we headed into Disneyland via the Downtown Disney monorail, which drops off in Tomorrowland, and in serious need of energy, grabbed Cheese-3PO burgers from Galacitc Grill, and yes, Cheese-3PO. All the burgers were Star Wars inspired and it was cool.

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Next up, I dragged Dad over to Fantasyland and we stood in line for probably too long, but I finally had the character meet of my dreams: Rapunzel and Flynn together. The girls in front of us in the line were totally crazy, screaming and throwing themselves at Flynn, and Punzie was having none of it which was pretty funny, but when it came to my turn we had a good talk about running and my medals so that was basically magical. Next? Well if I told you we went to see a show you can probably guess it was Mickey and the Magical Map, right? I’m kinda obsessed, and was pretty upset I couldn’t video it because I don’t have the right memory card for Dad’s camera, but oh well.

The park was super busy today; I’m pretty sure everything except the Winnie the Pooh ride had a 40+ minute wait. We passed Big Thunder, Pirates of the Caribbean and got all the way to Splash Mountain before realising this though, so we grabbed a Fastpass for Splash because the time slot wasn’t too far away so we just chilled out on a bench nearby for a bit, thinking of our poor achey legs.

From Critter Country we walked back through the park to Tomorrowland, and to the Star Wars Launch Bay, but didn’t really fancy the 45 minute wait for a Chewbacca meet, so we sat and watched a bit of a film about the making of the new and upcoming movies, then made our way back to Fantasyland, this time the Royal Theatre, for the Tangled show at Fantasy Faire, which was just as funny, if not better than the Frozen version.

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Saying goodbye to the Disneyland Park, we moved over to California Adventure. I’d made plans to meet up with my friend Nancy from Le Ears before we had dinner at Ariel’s Grotto. The food was great, and we were sat right on the water’s edge at Paradise Pier, soaking up all the atmosphere while we ate. The reservation was actually part of the World of Color dining package, which meant we were given preferred seating for the showing later that night. After dinner we went back to Cars Land (yes again, I can’t get over it) to see it all lit up, then cut through Bugs Land to Turtle Talk with Crush at the Animation Academy building – we love that guy!

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Exhausted, but still on our feet, we took a slow walk around the shops on our way back to Paradise Pier for World of Color; our preferred seating area opened at 8.45, and we got there about 9pm, which meant sitting down for a bit, and getting pretty photos of Mickey’s Fun Wheel.

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Now when we were last in Disneyland, which was in 2010, we saw World of Color which was relatively new then, and I remembered it to be crazy impressive. The current performance running, World of Color Celebrate was created for the 60th anniversary and is presented by Neil Patrick Harris, and did not fail to impress me just as much as the original! If you’ve never seen WoC before, go YouTube it right now, and thank me later.

The show took us past park closing, and we’ve officially been awake for over 18 hours now (and throw in a half marathon) so all that’s left is for me to say goodnight before I wipe out!

Today was our last day in the parks, and the last full day of our trip, and what a trip it’s been! Our flight is tomorrow (Monday) at about 5pm west coast time, and arriving back in the UK at midday Tuesday – please tell me it will be nice and warm? Coming home means normal blogging will be resuming, and I’ve got lots more about this trip to write about so be sure to stay tuned!

Disney, I’ll see ya real soon!

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Disneyland Day 3 – Star Wars 10K!

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.

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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!

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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!

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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.

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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!

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WDW Day 5 and RunDisney Half Marathon!

Has anyone ever run a half marathon with a chest infection? No? Just me..?

Yep, today was the big day, and the cold I’ve been battling since arriving in Florida was rearing its big ugly head, manifesting in my chest making every single breath hurt. Throw in the stress of all this setting off the weird little heart palpitations I get from time to time after about 9 miles, and I was not exactly fighting fit..

But we did it. It was not a record time, and I couldn’t even muster a sprint finish, but it was still epic. Looking back on it, now 12+ hours later, it was even more epic, mainly because I can breath properly now but still! There was a tonne of great entertainment, the cheering crowds were incredible and some of the sights were phenomenal.

We started once again in the Epcot parking lot, and from there ran up to the Magic Kingdom, down Main Street USA and right into Tomorrowland, then into Fantasyland and through the gloriously lit castle, before heading through Frontierland and out backstage. We then took a fairly straight route back down towards Epcot, finishing up with a loop down to the World Showcase and back, and finally that magical finish line was in sight!

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To celebrate, lunch was at Beaches and Cream, and included an sundae the size of my face – not that I could finish it! From there we walked into Epcot via the International Gateway so we could catch a monorail to the Magic Kingdom ticket centre, then decided to get the ferry boat to the park from there.

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Despite exhaustion, we still packed a fair amount into our afternoon: Philharmagic, character meets, a ride on the train, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain etc, but the rain began to pour down so we didn’t fancy sticking around to get soggy on a Jungle Cruise, and having been up since 3am, we settled on an early return to the resort so we could get some washing done.

Hello bed..

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WDW Day 3 and RunDisney 5K!

3.55 was the dreaded alarm for this morning. First race day was here!

Why so early? Well for starters, the races are all super early, today’s being 6am, and to ensure we had enough time to get to where we needed to be, we had to be on a bus to Epcot by 4.30, yikes!

It wasn’t so bad really; we were in bed about 9pm last night so we got a solid amount of sleep, and we were just so focused on the event that tiredness didn’t factor at all. The bus took us from the resort to the Epcot parking lot where all the race start and finish lines are. It was a huge area – had to be for 20,000 participants – and just like the expo, it was seamless; we could see exactly where we had to go, there were no queues for anything!

We were in Corral C, which meant we were set off about 10-15 minutes after the first group, but we were right at the front which was awesome! The count went down, the fireworks were set off and off we went! The course took us around the side of Epcot from the parking lot, underneath the Test Track course and into the park through Mexico, before running around the World Showcase, down the stretch to Future World, a quick detour by The Land and back out of the park by Spaceship Earth and to the finish line!

After the race, we went through the classic routine of collecting medals, water, Powerade and a cute little snack box of crisps, Oreos, a banana etc, then to the only queue: the wait for the bus back to the resort!

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Quick shower, change and snacks and we were back at Epcot just after park opening. We started off with Spaceship Earth, then went to meet Baymax(!!!) before doing the new Pixar short films show, and Living with the Land before starting on the World Showcase, this time in daylight! For lunch we had a reservation at Teppan Edo, which was awesome, and we to let that settle before going on Test Track, we stopped at China to watch the acrobat display. After TT, we did our last two Fastpasses for the day: Character Spot and The Seas with Nemo and Friends, and totally exhausted from our early start, we headed back to the resort to recover!

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Did you catch us on Periscope?

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WDW Day 2!

Good morning!

I say good morning because while it’s still the evening here, the time difference means it’s about 2am back home!

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Today was our Animal Kingdom day; we got up about 7ish, had a leisurely breakfast and got a fairly quiet bus to the park. Despite being earlier than opening time, we were let in to head down to the tree of life and wait for the remaining areas to open at 9am, before we joined the crowd making a beeline for Expedition Everest. Quite honestly, today was a really lucky day for wait times, and we hit all the big ticket attractions – Kilimanjaro Safaris, Festival of the Lion King, It’s Tough to be a Bug – with minimal waits, and pretty much walked into Flights of Wonder and Finding Nemo the Musical! In fact, despite having three Fastpasses booked, we only used one of them, for Dinosaur. We also went to hang out with Rafiki at Planet Watch for a little while.

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After feeling we were done for the day, and with the prospect of the races looming, we grabbed a cab to the ESPN complex for the RunDisney expo. Having no idea what to expect, I expected the worst: huge crowds, long waits, lots of pushing and shoving.. Nope. I honestly don’t think it could have been any easier. After picking up our bibs, then our race shirts and the commemorative jackets I had pre-ordered, all of which took maybe 15 minutes tops, we hit the main expo area. There were tonnes of great exhibitors with cool products, including the official RunDisney merchandise area, and the oh-so- popular New Balance, and we even got to meet Jeff Galloway, former Olympian and official ‘coach’ for RunDisney; it was cool, there was a selfie. Apart from a few little RunDisney bits, we didn’t really buy anything, although I’ve got my eye on a pair of the limited release New Balance shoes..

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From the expo we went back to French Quarter to drop our race stuff and hang out for a bit before we caught the boat to Disney Springs for a bit of light shopping and dinner at Wolfgang Puck Express, before calling it a day and boating back to the resort to get ourselves together and properly rested for the race.

So tomorrow is the 5k, which is really a no-pressure run, and it kicks off at 6am – 11am for my UK supporters. I’ll try and Periscope a bit of it, all depends on our wifi signal, but in any case, wish us luck!

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RunDisney 2016: The Final Checks

We leave tomorrow. WE LEAVE TOMORROW.

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In 4 days time we’ll have finished our first race, 6 until our second. This time next week we’ll be celebrating the end of the first week at the Cool Down Party. ISN’T IT CRAZY?!

I wrote my first RunDisney post on January 28th 2015, and since then I’ve written 38 training updates, and it all comes down to the next two weeks. This is insane. Can you tell I’m excited?

This week was for tapering, the word that most runners simultaneously love and hate; the cutting down of training run distances to prepare your body for an upcoming race. As per usual, we ran three times this week: a 5k, a 7k, and another 5k, which we did today. The next time we run will be in Florida!

So we’re all packed, or at least I am at this stage in the day. Four running costumes, plus spares, and one pair of running shoes, because I only trust one pair of my shoes at the moment! I’ve got a roll of Dynamic Tape and spray for my knee, Dad’s stocked us up with painkiller gels galore, and of course I’ve packed probably too many pairs of Mickey ears, which means I must be ready!

Tomorrow is going to be crazy long, starting at 5am UK time with a 4 hour coach journey, a 9 hour flight and finishing in EST, so we will be categorically pooped by the end of it all, but I’ll be in Disney World and it will be 100% worth it.

If you didn’t catch it yesterday, you can read our itinerary here to see what we’ll be getting up to, and I’ll be live blogging every day! You can also keep up via Twitter, Instagram and I’ll be streaming some of our trip on Periscope, so be sure to follow me @lottiedoesdisney!

Are you ready for the fun to start? I AM

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My Disney Trip Itinerary!

You know who I love? Disney lovers.

My Disney friends just get me; instead of the classic ‘you’re going to Disney again!?’ that I get from my colleagues and non-Disney friends, whenever I’m getting ready for a trip, I know I’ve got a team of people that are just as excited for what I’m going to get up to as I am, and that always makes me so happy.

If you’re one of these people, you’re awesome.

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So given that I leave on Monday, I just thought I’d share our rough plan for our trip:

Monday 4th – arrive in Orlando, check into Port Orleans French Quarter. It’ll be quite late and we’ll be exhausted, so probably dinner and bed, maybe a quick trip to Disney Springs!

Tuesday 5th – Magic Kingdom day, starting with the Keys to the Kingdom tour, and ending with dinner at California Grill.

Wednesday 6th – Animal Kingdom, then over to ESPN Wide World of Sports for the Run Disney Expo where we’ll be picking up all our race packs, eek!

Thursday 7th – RunDisney WDW 5K at 6am, followed by a day in Epcot with lunch at Teppan Edo

Friday 8th – Hollywood Studios, and an early night..

Saturday 9th – RunDisney WDW half marathon at 5.30am, yikes! We’ll be recovering with lunch at Beaches and Cream, then heading into the Magic Kingdom to celebrate our first week of races being over!

Sunday 10th – start the day with a recovery swim, then spend some time in Disney Springs for the Run Disney Cool Down Party. We’re gonna need some down time!

Monday 11th – after a day of rest, Monday we’ll be attempting the Four Park Challenge, wrapping up with a Fastpass for Illuminations at Epcot!

Tuesday 12th – a bit of Epcot in the morning, and over to Hollywood Studios for the afternoon, finishing with Fantasmic!

Wednesday 13th – we’ll be saying goodbye to WDW in the Magic Kingdom, before we head to the airport for our flight to LAX. We’ll be arriving pretty late again, and checking into the Paradise Pier hotel in Disneyland.

Thursday 14th – we’ve got to go to the RunDisney expo to pick up our race packs and park tickets before we go into Disneyland!

Friday 15th – breakfast on Main Street USA, then we might hop across to California Adventure.

Saturday 16th – RunDisney Star Wars 10k first thing, then more park time!

Sunday 17th – RunDisney Star Wars half marathon, and we’re done with all our running, YAY! The rest of the day will probably be spent in California Adventure, and I’m hoping we can meet up with my lovely friend Nancy in the park! To end our trip, we’ve got a dinner booking at Ariel’s Grotto and preferential seating for the World of Color show!

Monday 18th – as we’ve only got a 4 day park ticket, today will be for outlet shopping and hitting up Walmart before our flight home in the evening, then Tuesday we’ll be back on British soil..

  I’M SO EXCITED!!!

I’ll be live posting the whole trip, hopefully everyday, and don’t forget to keep up with me on Twitter (@lottiedoesblog) and Instagram (@lottiedoesdisney)! I’ll also be trying my hand at Periscope (@lottiedoesdisney), so give me a follow for our live streams!

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RunDisney 2016: 2 Weeks to go!

Yep, in two weeks time we’ll have completed our first week of races and I know I say it every week, but really where has the time gone?! Despite being Christmas week (did you all have a fabulous one?), training waits stops for no-one when the big days are so close!

Two runs this week, both around five miles to test the water with my knee recovery. The great news is, its doing really well! I’m halfway through my physio treatment now and it all seems to be going in the right direction; this week I was taught how to properly tape it so that I can do it myself while we’re away as well.

In any case, both the runs went well, a little slower than usual; on Wednesday because of me being out of practice, and today because of far too much Christmas food! I can only describe it as all being comfortable. At this stage we should be tapering down, so we just need to keep moving, not worrying too much about this distances or pace, and this coming week especially, we just need to make sure we’re not going to be causing injuries!

So just one more week of running until we leave, its all getting so exciting! One more week, three more training runs..

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PS. Do you follow me on Twitter? This week I’m going to be posting a bunch of polls to see what you guys want to see during my upcoming trip and would love some input! I’m @lottiedoesblog 🙂

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RunDisney 2016: 3 Weeks to go!

Just a quick little update on this week today, I’m busy trying to feel Christmassy in preparation for next week!

So on Tuesday Dad and I headed out for a quick run after I decided my knee could probably handle it, and we’d only made it about 1k from home before it caved, and I finally gave in to the suggestion of going to Physiotherapy, which I did on Thursday evening.

Turns out, my knee-cap is mis-aligned, causing abrasion between bones around my knee and creating scar tissue, which is what is causing the pain I’m experiencing, so in the next few weeks I’ll be undergoing treatment to reduce this scar tissue, while strengthening the muscles in my legs which will keep my knees straight while I run, simple! Meanwhile, my leg is covered with KT tape to support my knee, so that I can keep running through the treatment.

Freshly taped, we went out Friday morning to test this theory, and it was an absolute dream; I felt totally fine, which cheered me up immensely, yay! We have, however, held off running this weekend due to it playing up slightly on Saturday, and also Dad’s had some backpain, so we’re going to allow recovery time (and cos its Christmas) before a final ramp up and taper down in the final weeks approaching races!

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RunDisney 2016: 4 Weeks to go!

4 weeks *tears up with excitement*

Now a lot of exciting things have happened this week, but running sort of hasn’t been one of them. We kicked off the week with a recovery run on Tuesday; I call it a recovery run because it was in no way a training run, we just had to keep moving following Saturday’s half marathon distance – we lasted about 25 minutes and everything was hurting a little. For me, that was the end of my training for the week. Remember that knee problem I’ve mentioned before? Yeah well our recovery run tipped it over the edge and I’ve spent most of my time this week with an icepack taped to my leg.

Tuesday evening also came with one of those exciting things I opened with: corral announcements, and the release of the event guide! So we’ve been placed in corral F, with a predicted time of <2:21, which we’re capable of, but I very much doubt we’ll do what with photo ops and character meets along the course. The release of the event guide means we now know our race courses, the expo set-up and all the timings and transportation details, so I can start memorising everything in an attempt to mentally prepare myself!

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Exciting thing number 2: we’ve received some of the details for the Star Wars weekend from our travel provider, so it’ll only be a matter of time before we have our corrals and other info through from RunDisney! Unfortunately techincalities have meant having to reschedule one of our breakfast reservations, but its really not the end of the world!

Dad ran on Saturday without me, partially because of my knee, but mainly because I was in London for the day with my lovely friend Chelsea (because I know she’s reading this), eating pizza and amazing cookies, but considering we walked over 10 miles around the city I think that counts as training! And despite a slight complication at the end of the day, I came home to a package from Walt Disney World – our travel documents!

This is happening!

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RunDisney 2016: 13.1 (5 Weeks to go!)

I know that I post my RunDisney training updates on Sundays normally, but this week is a special exception for two reasons: 1) I have a special Christmas post for tomorrow, and 2) today’s run needs talking about.

Quite simply, we did it.

13.1 miles.

2:40:40.

Done.

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Despite many people believing that you shouldn’t run the distance you’re training for before the race itself, given that Dad and I have been physically ready for this distance for a good while having trained for almost a whole year, we wanted to just get out there and do it, to feel 100% confident in our ability to do it, and also to set our first PB, and a time we can work from.

Knowing this was our goal for the week, we kept our midweek runs short – around 30-40 minutes each, and pretty much entirely flat, leaving us in a good position for this morning.

Conditions today were not ideal. The wind at the seafront was ridiculously strong, which despite giving us a nice extra push for the first 5-6 miles, it was kicking up all the sand from the beach which got into our face and shoes, forcing us inland for the second half, at which point we had to turn around and start running back against the brick wall of wind. It was hard work, and had conditions been better we would have been totally fine, but the extra work took its toll mentally as much as it did physically.

In terms of pacing and split times, we remained fairly consistent. For the first 7k, 1/3 of the total distance, we kept an average of 11 min/mile, and completed it in just under 50 minutes, and despite feeling much longer, the second and third 7k splits only actually took 55 minutes, so we were pretty well paced the whole time, even if fighting against the wind drained us of energy.

After finishing, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, although I was too exhausted to do either! I’m honestly just so relieved and impressed, and 100% feeling prepared for January now!

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RunDisney 2016: 6 Weeks to go!

Six weeks. SIX WEEKS. That actually sounds like a short length of time right?!

We’ve dropped well below the 40 day mark now (TOMORROW ITS 5 WEEKS TIL WE LEAVE), and everything is becoming more and more real, not that it wasn’t before! We are 100% sorted on everything now, to do lists are ticked, and the only small thing I have to worry about is sorting my running outfits for the Star Wars races!

Our races are now top on the RunDisney site!

Our races are now top on the RunDisney site!

As for running this week, its been fairly non-existent I’m afraid.. I’ve been having some problems with my knees and getting so close to the main event I really don’t want to cause any problems. Dad’s also been working away a lot this week, so there really just hasn’t been a lot of time.

The original plan this weekend was to do another mini rebel, starting with a Parkrun yesterday. Instead of our usual course, we decided to try out our other local course at Poole as they were having a pacer event and we thought it would be fun. The Poole course is a lot flatter than Bournemouth, so the potential for a new PB was definitely there, but getting caught up in the pacer event, I started the course way too fast, and ran the first half on the heels of the 27 minute guy, and considering I have a PB of 28:14, it was a major stretch. By the 3k mark, I was having some real issues with my heart rate (which is becoming more of a recurring problem, and I know when it happens I should stop running..) but I pushed myself onwards, having to stop every few minutes to walk and calm myself down; I even had to stop mid-sprint-finish which is ridiculously unlike me. BUT my time came out at 28:39, so only 25 seconds off my PB, and I think had I not pushed myself too much at the start, a PB would have been possible.

As for today, after spending my shift at work hearing about severe weather warnings on the radio (50mph wind, what), Dad and I made the decision to give it a miss, and save ourselves for next week when we’re going the full distance and hitting 13.1!

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PS. We signed up for our first ever virtual run yesterday, but more on that closer to the time!

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RunDisney 2016: 7 Weeks to go!

I know I probably say this every week, but I can’t believe how fast the time is going, and the excitement is really getting to me – there’s a lot of squeaking going on!

We’ve had another good week; we only ran twice, but that was a tactical decision following last weekend’s mini rebel training and knowing we had a long distance this weekend. I also think given the amount of time we train, missing a run here and there really doesn’t put us behind like it used to, and the recovery time is good for us occasionally. Our first run was a classic training run – we went out for about an hour and did about 5 miles thereabouts, which is fairly normal for us on these sorts of runs.

Saturday’s target distance was 10 miles; a distance we haven’t covered in 9 weeks, but we took the same approach yesterday as we did back then: slow and steady. By holding back on our pace, we’ve found we’re able to go much longer continuous distances and avoid tiring, and today we ran well over 5 miles before pausing for a quick walking break. We were really lucky to have clear and dry conditions, but the winds were very strong at times, and the temperature had dropped considerably overnight, so it was pretty nippy! At the 10k mark, we’d been running for 1 hr 10 minutes, which actually isn’t too far off our race pace for that distance, and despite aiming to complete the full 10 miles in around 2 hours, we actually hit it at 1 hr 52 minutes, which was great!

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Better still, because we’d finished the distance quite a way from home, after a quick breather we kept on running, and not only did we carry on to 19k (11.8 miles), which is the longest distance we’ve ever run, we did it in a pretty impressive 2 hr 20 minutes – 4 minutes faster than our 18k record. Unfortunately by the 19k mark my ankle was feeling a little dodgy, otherwise we would have pushed the final 2k to the full 13.1 mile half marathon distance, which would have taken us around 12-15 minutes, so we can assume our half marathon time to be approximately 2 hrs 30!

Feeling much more confident about our efforts this week, I’m pretty happy to be going into our last 6 weeks of training, yay! We’ve sorted our American Visas this weekend too, so now all that’s left on our to-do list is sort our car hire for California! Eeeek!

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RunDisney 2016: 8 Weeks to go!

That’s right, in 8 weeks time our first week of races will be over! Today, in fact, marks exactly 50 days until we leave and arrive in Florida, and 50 days until our first day in the parks in California, which is beyond insane.

So another week of running; four runs for me, in fact. Due to calf issues, Dad decided to give our Tuesday run a miss, so I went out solo, but due to yuck weather I only did about 20 minutes running around our surrounding roads so I wasn’t too far from home when the rain got worse. Thursday, however, conditions were much better, and we did a solid 45+ minute training run, but still taking things a little on the easy side because we had a big weekend ahead of us..

Another Mini Rebel, yayayay!

Saturday we ran our ParkRun. It was raining, and it was windy, and once again we were joined by Sophia (who is now 9, crazy!). Despite conditions, we still made it in a respectable 31 minutes, which was Soph’s new PB – such a little trooper!

Continuing with the mini rebel, today we ran 7 miles, or actually 11.5km, which is a little further! We ran late afternoon, and for a change it was relatively dry right up until the last few kilometres, so conditions were pretty ideal; not too much wind along the beach is the best! We had a few minor setbacks, worst for me being the return of chronic stitches, but its still fairly amazing to think how far we’ve come in the last year, and at this point in our schedule, the last thing we want to do is push ourselves towards injury.

So aside from our training, this week the medals for the Star Wars weekend were released, aren’t they amazing?! We’ll be earning ourselves the middle three, for the 10k, half and Rebel, and I definitely think they’re the best ones!

You might have read my post earlier this week talking about our final checks for our trip, and I’m pretty excited to have started booking Disneyland dining reservations – just one so far, and I’ll be booking one more on Wednesday – and this week I want us to sort our American Visas as well, but its becoming very very real now!

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January Disney Trip – What’s done, and what’s left!

Would you believe that yesterday marks exactly 8 weeks until Dad and I leave for Florida, kick-starting our awesome RunDisney tour of Walt Disney World and Disneyland California? Well I can’t! I’m beyond excited; its so close I can practically taste the Mickey waffles!

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Being in the last stages of preparing, there’s been lots to do these last few weeks, so this is where we are:

• Our WDW stay has been 100% paid off

• We’ve checked into our hotel online, and personalised our Magic Bands

• We did our ADRs at the 180 day mark, so they’ve been long sorted, but last week I had the nasty early morning alarm to book our Fastpasses!

• We’ve booked our spot on the Magical Express

• Our coaches both to and from the airport are sorted

• I’ve got two out of four running costumes ready

We do, however, still have a few things left to do:

• Pay the final balance of our California booking

• Get our American visas – kinda super important!

• Dining reservations for California, as they can’t be made until 60 days prior

• Sort out car hire in California

• Get packing!

We’ve only got 55 days to wait! Do you have any Disney trip preparation rituals?

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RunDisney 2016: 9 Weeks to go!

Today I’m coming to you all from a much better place than I have in the last few weeks, yay! My back is feeling a lot better – still not 100% but it’ll take time – and I’ve been able to start training at the gym again, which for me has such a positive impact on my mood, and I needed to feel better this week.

I went to the chiropractor on Monday about my back, and even after a treatment session still wasn’t seeing much improvement, so making the assumption that the problem was more muscular, I spent Tuesday religiously applying Deep Heat and Deep Freeze every few hours, which seemed to work wonders, and after surviving a gym session on Wednesday without too much bother, we were back running Thursday.

We did one of our usual routes, down through the town centre to the beach, along the seafront, up the zig-zag to the clifftop and home, which is about 7km, and while we took it at a fairly easy pace, it felt good and it was great to be back at it after all the worry last week.

Saturday was a ParkRun, and what a soggy one it was! Light showers turned to heavy downpours, and crisp autumn breeze became super blustery, and in my oversized waterproof coat I basically turned into a kite; resistance training to the max! It was a quiet race – not even 200 people turned up – and the course was turning to sludge, which slowed the pace a fair amount for everyone, not to mention dodging the people who had fallen in the mud (and stopping to help the up of course!), but I felt back on form, running ahead of my dad for the first time since returning to training after Europe. Timewise, it wasn’t a PB, but it also wasn’t my slowest: 31:37, which about 3 minutes off my PB, but I was never gonna do that in those conditions, and in fact only 5 of the 190 runners set new PBs!

AND MORE GOOD NEWS:

Today we signed up for the inaugural Disneyland Paris half marathon weekend in September 2016, to do both the 5k and half. I wish they were doing a 10k as well, but hey ho!

So yep, I’m back on the brightside, and races are looming on the horizon!

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RunDisney 2016: 10 Weeks to go!

Well after last week, I was hoping to be able to come back this week with an upbeat post announcing that we’ve had a great week and I’m finally back into my stride with this whole running business after my trip, but I’m afraid its not been a fairytale week..

Weather in Bournemouth this week has been all over the place, and Tuesday was especially horrible, so Dad and I decided that instead of skipping out on a run, or getting soaked to the skin in the rain, we would head down to the gym and do our regular 45 minute training run on the treadmills instead. In theory, it was a great idea; no rain or wind to hold us back, the ability to maintain and control consistent speeds.. The reality though is that it was practically tropical there, surrounded by loads of hot, sweaty people, and for us as road-runners, running on a treadmill is painfully dull, and also a completely different running experience.

Not too far into this run, we decided to cut it from 45 minutes to a 5k distance, which essentially cut it down to 30 minutes. Running on a treadmill is hard work when you’re used to roads, the impact is totally different and you have less control over yourself, and all of that combined really takes it out of you. There’s also no moving air to cool you down, and we felt it! Thinking nothing of it, the week carried on..

The plan for the weekend was another mini-rebel challenge, to prepare us for the real deal in January. With work schedules as they were, we made the decision to skip the second training run of the week, and do our consecutive runs on Friday and Saturday, 5 miles and 9 miles, but following Tuesday’s treadmill run, Wednesday came with bad news for me: the pain in my back that I had suffered a little in Europe had returned.

Still in pain Thursday and Friday, we decided to call off the 5 miles, and compromise with a 10k early Saturday morning, as Dad was heading up to the Rugby World Cup final. I felt fine, and we set off fine, but it wasn’t too long (about 3k, in fact) before the pain set back in, and we were forced to turn home. Doing so meant that we did about 6k in around 45 minutes, which in all fairness isn’t too bad in any case, but I just felt rubbish; I still haven’t got back to my usual standard and now I’m injured, and just feeling further and further from where I was before I went away.

And that’s really all I’ve got for this week. I’ve got a chiropractor appointment booked for tomorrow morning, but right now I just feel a bit pants, and all I want to do it getting running again..

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RunDisney 2016: 11 Weeks to go!

And another week has flown by, moving us ever closer to the big day, or days in our case!

This week has been our first full week back in training after my trip, so its been a case of taking things fairly easy. We’ve also had some issues with fitting in running this week, so we’ve only run twice.

Our first run was a standard 45ish minute run, taking a regular route down to the beach and back. We kept a good continuous pace, with a few walking breaks, and it was raining which was a good motivation! Overall we did about 7km in just under an hour, which is slow by our regular standards but a good way of getting back into it.

Yesterday was an 8-miler. We had a good start, but running into the wind for the first half was pretty tiring! That said, we were still keeping a good pace, and once we got to the turnaround point, it was a lot easier with the wind behind us, and going back seemed much easier. It took us about 1hr 40 altogether, which is a totally acceptable time, but coming back from time off, I’m still struggling a little with getting back into a positive mindframe.

Next week will be a better week though! We’re doing another mini rebel challenge, and I’m getting back on track with healthy eating and gym training, so once I’m back in the place I was before my trip, it will all fall back into place!

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RunDisney 2016: 15 Weeks to go, and Tough Mudder!

Ok, we all know what this week was about.. Tough Mudder.

With that looming at the end of the week, we decided to only run once, on Tuesday, and skip Thursday to save ourselves for Saturday.. It was a nice little 5-6 miler, nothing special, but Saturday..

Saturday was all about the mud. If I’m being honest, I’m still a little in shock and awe that its all over, and that we did it. It was beyond insane.

Up and on the road by 7.30am, a rush to sign in and find our team, and into the warm-up zone for a quick jump around before making our way to the start line – which of course we could only get to by getting over a 6ft wall!

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From there, it was only 11.8 miles with almost 30 obstacles to get through before we crossed the finish line again, no biggie..

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Ice baths, mud miles, 12 ft walls, tunnels, hills, and electric shocks – the photos don’t do justice – and just over 4 hours later, we crossed the line and were greeted by goodie bags and a pint!

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I can’t believe I’m saying this, but it was such an incredible experience! Definitely hard work, but amazing. Our team was phenomenal, especially Dad, who only actually signed up for this during the week, but was such a trooper and blew us all away!

Would I do another one? Let’s just watch this space..

And as for Run Disney, today marks the first day of double digits – only 99 days until we leave!

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RunDisney 2016: 16 Weeks to go!

Coming off the high of last week (Dad’s PB and our longest continuous run), this week has also been a great one. We’ve definitely found our stride, if you pardon the pun, and every aspect of our running seems to be improving so much, we’re actually surprising ourselves!

As per usual, we ran twice in the week, Tuesday and Thursday; both very different runs. Tuesday was a fairly regular route for us, with a difference: we ran basically all of it! Pretty much all of our training so far has been a rather loose interpretation of Jeff Galloway’s ‘run-walk-run’ method, whereby walking breaks are encouraged so as not to overdo it or cause injury, but following our first continuous 5K last week, we’ve really found the kick up the backside to keep going, knowing that we can. We did walk a steep bit of hill, but other than that, we ran the full distance.

Thursday was a split run – we ran down to my nan’s house, about 3k, stopped off there for a quick visit, and then ran back home, so about 6-6.5k altogether. Generally, the outward journey is downhill, and the homebound uphill, but we tried to push ourselves as much as possible. Yes, we hate hills, but they do appear in most of our routes, so they’re pretty much an inevitable part of any run. When possible, we run what we can, but personally I don’t see any shame in walking them because it does save straining ourselves, and it still works our legs pretty hard.

Saturday was a 10-miler. Its the first really long distance we’ve done since we got back into training after Japan, but with the successes of the last week in mind we kept fairly positive. The route was chosen based on us having a pretty good knowledge of the distances of certain legs, and that helps us keep pace and also have an idea of the end goal, so off we set..

We ran at a slightly slower than usual pace, and comfortably completed the first 5k in about 33 minutes – not too shabby – but we kept on running. Comfortably, we hit the 6k mark, and then the 7k mark, and were basically shocking ourselves as we kept going! We decided that we would stop at the halfway mark – 5 miles/8k – mainly because I needed the toilet, and also to take on a little bit of fuel, but super proud of ourselves for running that whole distance without stopping to walk! Quick loo stop, fuel loaded, and off we went again, running all the way to the 14k mark before we reached a nasty hill that we walked, and then stormed the last stretch home!

Overall, we actually did about 10.1 miles in 1hr 58 (including our toilet stop!) and more importantly, feeling as if we could go on for another 3 miles quite happily! Knowing that, I feel totally confident in our ability to run the full half marathon in 2.5 hours, especially with another 3-4 months training.

Yep, pretty happy this week! Next week I’ll be running my first ever Tough Mudder race, which will be something a little different and I’m totally terrified, so be sure to send lots of pixie dust my way!

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RunDisney 2016: 17 Weeks to go!

Yep, we’ve flown through another week already! One more week closer to my birthday, one more week closer to Christmas, and one week closer to our races, eeek!

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In fact, we’re not far off the 100 day mark, and by the time I get back from Europe it’ll be closer to 80, and all the fun starts! November is really the month where everything happens – fastpass+ choices, paying off Disney World and Disneyland, and booking any dining in California, and once all that’s done then we’re practically there! (I also finished the first of my running costumes!)

We’ve taken it fairly easy this week, with three short-ish runs, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t good ones. I’ve had a pretty nasty cold this week but actually running seems to have helped me sweat it out a bit! With this in mind, we kept our first two runs this week fairly short, around 30-40 minutes, but fairly continuous, and we kept a pretty good pace. Saturday though..

Originally, we were planning on doing ParkRun, but due to timing issues we decided to do our own 5k earlier in the morning, but to run it at race pace, with Dad really hoping he could hit a new PB below 30 minutes. We set off fast, taking a familiar route through the town centre to the pier and along the beach, and were easily keeping a pace below 6 min/km, and, after managing a sprint finish, not only did we finish <30, we actually did it in 28:43 – Dad’s fastest time and only 30 seconds away from mine. Not only that, after a short walk to get our breath back, we actually ran the rest of the way home, bringing our total distance to about 8k!

Now Dad’s proven to himself that he can do it, he’s definitely got the bug, and we might actually go for another run this evening!

Next week we’re back onto big distances with a 10-miler, so we can start working on pace and stamina again. Until then, see ya real soon!

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RunDisney 2016: 18 weeks to go, and a Mini Rebel!

This week has been a big week you guys!

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For starters we did our two midweek runs, both of which felt pretty good this week. I feel like I’ve finally sorted balancing my running training with my gym training so that I’m not having to sacrifice one for the other, and also so that my body can cope with two very different workout types without injury or strain. I’m a happy girl!

Our first run was a solid 45 minutes, and we managed the first 4k with no breaks which was really great. It was a slightly different route for us, which made a nice change from the norms. Our second run was a little shorter; we actually took my car into the garage for a service, and ran home from there which was about 3.5 miles.

What’s this?

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Why, a mini rebel, of course!

So if you keep up with my training, you’ll know I added these ‘mini rebel challenges’ to our new training schedule in order to train our bodies for running long distances with no rest days, and this weekend I did the first one. I ran our regular Saturday morning ParkRun 5k by myself as Dad was away, and despite having not run the course since before our Japan trip, I actually set a new PB of 28:14, which was 35 seconds faster than my previous. I honestly impressed myself because I found it pretty tough, so hopefully with a bit more training I’ll get sub-28 soon.

On top of that 5k, today Dad and I ran 7 miles this afternoon. Overall it was fairly good; we chose a really great shady route which was nice to run, and we were doing really well until my body got in the way, yet again.. I feel pretty bad because it feels like every week I’ve got an excuse for a falter in a run, but this week it was a pretty major issue with my heart (which I actually get more frequently than I probably should, and I genuinely am going to make a doctors appointment to get it looked at), and I forced myself to soldier on through rather than stopping for a minute to sort it out, which meant I made the situation worse. Nonetheless, we still hit the 7 mile mark in just under 1hr 30, and we finished this week on a pretty good note – even if my knees don’t agree tomorrow morning!

Next week we’ve got a nice relaxed week, so all should be well!

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RunDisney 2016: 19 Weeks to go!

So we’ve already completed the first 4 weeks of our new training programme; time is flying by and we’re creeping ever closer to the 100 day mark!

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Remember last week was a bit of a bust? Well this week was always going to be more of a success, and it was for the most part. We did three decent runs: a 45 minute one, and two 5ks, and I think what we’ve noticed most this week is how much we’ve managed to cut down on walking intervals during our runs.

I’m also really happy to be at the end of August now and heading into autumn – I’ve spent the last week getting erratically angry with the sun. Goodbye summer heat and hello brisk winds and running in the rain! My body sucks at regulating its own temperature and I’ve been finding summer running pretty horrendous, even doing it at 7am when its a little cooler.

Next week I’ll be running our first ‘mini rebel’ – 5k on Saturday and 7 miles on Sunday. Its essentially half the distances of the real Rebel Challenge races, designed to get us used to running big distances with no rest day. Unfortunately Dad’s away on Saturday so won’t be doing the 5k with me, but he’s not getting away without 7 miles on Sunday!

That’s all for now, folks!

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RunDisney 2016: 20 Weeks to go!

Despite my positive attitude to our new training schedule, I knew a week like this would happen at some point: the ‘disappointing’ week – the kind where running isn’t top priority.

In all fairness its my fault. I had two total burnout gym sessions this week which left me too tired and too achy for our early week runs, and it was the sensible decision to give them a miss in anticipation of a bigger distance on Saturday.

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So this week we ran 7.5 miles, in the fairly respectable time of 1 hour 30. Sure, we’ve been faster, but this week wasn’t about pushing ourselves, it was about keeping going. Plus, despite being a British summer, its still August and it was really warm, even at 8am, and I really struggle with heat.

So what else has happened this week? Well becoming an ever-increasing priority for Dad and me is improving our eating habits, and while its a bit of a challenge, we’re slowly getting there, and probably the greatest revelation on this subject is our lasagne transformation. Lasagne is my all-time favourite meal, we eat it every week, but we’ve made a few simple changes – swapping beef mince for Quorn mince, and adding spinach as well as using spinach lasagne sheets – and we’re definitely onto a winner, it tastes amazing! I’m also making an effort to prepare more meals in advance so I’m not tempted to grab a ready meal at work or give into my snacking temptations.

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With all this in mind, I’m pretty pumped for getting back into things properly next week with a few key mantras in mind:

– Always find time to stretch and cool down properly

– Eating healthy makes for happier people

– Just keep swimming!

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RunDisney 2016 – 21 Weeks to go!

 Time seems to be flying by at the moment, and we’ve completed another week of training!

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So once again, we’ve completed 3 runs this week: two 45 minute runs, and a 5k on Saturday. We’ve had great conditions this week; running really late on Tuesday (about 9-10pm), through cooling drizzle on Thursday, and early along the beach on Saturday.

Saturday’s run felt really good; we’d normally ParkRun on a Saturday morning, but my sister was doing her first triathlon at the beach, which started at 7am, so we decided to go down and support her, and run while she was on the cycle leg of her race. Dad and I do a lot of running at the beach, either running from home to the cliff and down to the beach and back, or just running up and down. Its a love/hate relationship: Bournemouth beach is beautiful, the sea breeze is cooling and its a nice stretch for longer distance runs, but at the same time it can be too windy, too crowded and there’s no real shade when its really sunny. Its also great because basically all of the races and fun runs that happen in Bournemouth take place at the beach, so its easy to gauge distances. For example, our local Race for Life is from Bournemouth to Boscombe pier, slightly further on and back, and knowing that, that’s what we did on Saturday. We didn’t set any PBs, but we did some good continuous running, and we weren’t slow!

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Another really exciting happening of the week was finally receiving our Rebel Challenge training tshirts. Training shirts for the races are released for pre-order for a limited time on the US Disney Store, and are for US delivery only, so I enlisted the help of a lovely friend from California who ordered them on our behalf, and shipped them over to us from there. She’s a star!

We’re coming for you, Rebel Challenge!

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RunDisney 2016: 22 weeks to go!

So after the blip of the last month, we’re finally back into our rhythm, completing the first week of our new schedule without a hitch, yay!

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The first major difference of the programme is the increase in length of our midweek runs, from 30 to 45 minutes, which really wasn’t too much of a problem, and taking it in our stride (pardon the pun) was quite reassuring as it meant we weren’t as far setback as I’d worried I might be after the time away.

I also threw us back in at the deep end this week with a 6 mile weekender, primarily because I knew we could do the distance, and also because in our 45 minute runs we can go 4-5 miles, so all of our weekend distances are 6+. Ok, so we weren’t up to our usual pace for that distance, but our PB is 1 hour 3 minutes, and we did it in 1 hour 15; a month off, and only 12 minutes difference really doesn’t seem to bad if you ask me!

Another change you might have noticed if you’ve kept up with my training posts, is that I’m starting to count down the weeks, rather than up as I did before, mainly for my own sanity, but also because it seems far more positive watching the numbers tick down!

Today we also FINALLY managed to book our places on the Keys to the Kingdom Tour for the first day of our trip! We’ve been trying to book it since the 180 day mark, but Disney have been undergoing some ‘Magical Enhancements’ to their tour booking system, and when we tried again today, they were ready for us! 8th try lucky..

This time in 22 weeks time we’ll have completed both of our Disney World runs, crazy right?!

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RunDisney 2016: A New Schedule

Let’s not even talk about this week.

Yes, we did start running again this week, but I’m not even sure you can call what we did ‘running’, so moving swiftly onwards..

When we first started training back in January/February, we stuck to the recommended training plan provided by Run Disney and Jeff Galloway, and we worked our way through most of that leading up to our Japan trip last month, but with our trip looming ever closer, now we’re back into things, we need to modify and increase our training to prepare us for the grand finale of our holiday: Rebel Challenge. On their own, a 10k and a half marathon wouldn’t faze us too much; we’ve run plenty of 10Ks, and our training so far puts us in good stead for a half marathon, which we’ll of course be completing the week before in WDW. Rebel Challenge, however, is both these distances one day after the other.. Yikes, right?

All our previous training has left a recovery day between runs, so now we need to learn to push through and run on consecutive days, and with this in mind, I’ve written us our new training schedule:

Its fairly similar to the Jeff Galloway plan, alternating shorter distances with longer distances, but I’ve added in what I like to call ‘Mini Rebels’. As the name suggests, they’re basically two consecutive runs, just smaller distances that the main event – 3 miles and 7 miles, 4 miles and 8 miles etc – and we’ll be doing one of these every month or so in addition to our regular training, and we’ll also be increasing the length of our midweek runs to at least 45 minutes.

This coming week marks 22 weeks until we leave for Florida, so we’ve got 22 weeks of training (including over Christmas..), 5 mini Rebels and a whole lot of powering through to do!

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RunDisney 2016: A Training Update

It has been a long time since I’ve written about our RunDisney training, for a few reasons:

1. I was finding it a little repetitive each week; ‘woo, we ran three times, woo, we were a little faster this week’

2. Due to injury/our recent Tokyo trip/various other excuses like the weather, we’ve really not been as into training as we were when we were at our peak

3. We haven’t run since pre-Japan

Everyone takes breaks, and knowing that that is ok is important; a work, work, work mentality doesn’t do anyone any good. Sure, we’ve enjoyed a little break, but we know we have to get back into our proper training schedule this week as tomorrow marks 23 WEEKS UNTIL WE LEAVE FOR DISNEY WORLD. No biggie or anything.

So we are now totally 100% officially confirmed for all our races – Disney World 5K, Disney World half, and Star Wars Rebel Challenge (10k and half). While we’ve been confirmed for all our races since June, because we’re booking the California leg of our trip through a RunDisney sponsored travel agent, we only officially entered Rebel last week. We’ve also entered all of our Proof of Times, due to our estimated finish time for the halfs being under 3hrs 15; we’re aiming for around 2.5 hours.

All of our accommodation is sorted! In Disney World we’ll be staying at Port Orleans – French Quarter, which includes a quick service dining plan, but we’ve also made a few Advanced Dining Reservations which I’m really excited about. Its still too early to book Fastpasses, and we’re having some problems with booking the Keys to the Kingdom tour, but we’ll cross all those bridges when we get to them! In Disneyland California we’ll be staying at the Paradise Pier hotel, booked through the travel agent, which means we won’t get our confirmation details til November, but we know that’s where we’ll be and that’s good enough for us!

So now its just a case of buckling back down into a training routine. Next week will just be a case of easing ourselves back into it, and then after that we’ll begin ramping it up to hit the bigger distances, and also do a little challenge training to get ourselves used to the idea of running long distances without a rest day in between.

23 weeks, lets do this!

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RunDisney 2016 – Training Week 16

This post is coming out a day late, but the weekend drained me so much that I decided to take a quick power nap at about 6pm yesterday before writing my weekend posts, and I ended up sleeping through til 10pm, at which point I decided I should probably just get some sleep and start fresh today!

Yesterday Dad and I ran in the Poole 10k, our first competitive 10k since last October, which was our first. Now I’m not one to brag or anything, but we smashed it! We shaved 4 minutes off our time from October, finishing in 1 hour 3 minutes, and we actually did the first 5k in a record pace of 31 minutes! Safe to say we’re feeling pretty happy with ourselves!

Now we made a couple of changes to our plans this week..

With sign up for the Star Wars half marathon weekend opening early to APs, DVCs and travel companies, we got in touch with the travel company we thought about booking Disney World with (but didn’t in the end), and when they came back to us with prices, we had to think a lot about comparing prices from all our options, and we made a rather spur of the moment decision.. to do the Rebel Challenge!

So originally we were going to do the 5k, which will be on the Friday, and the half marathon on the Sunday, but Rebel Challenge is completing the 10k on Saturday and half marathon on Sunday, essentially running two longer distance races with no rest day in between, eek!

Either way, we decided to book through the company, which means we’ve officially been accepted for early registration! We decided we won’t be staying on property in California; the local hotels are literally only minutes from the parks anyway, and are about a quarter of the price, so for only a few days, which we’ll spend entirely in the parks, it wasn’t worth the extra spend.

So this has been a pretty great week! We’re going to dial down training a little in the run up to Japan, then kick it back up to full notch once we’re back!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 15

Another week, and a new PB, yay!

Jeff’s training schedule implements something called ‘Magic Miles’, which is where every other week you time yourself for one mile, and then watch how this time improves with your training. Dad and I, however are sort-of bypassing this, and instead taking part in our local ParkRun 5k every other week instead, and tracking our improvement based on our times for that. Last time we did a ParkRun, we set a PB for the distance, and this week we managed to beat it; granted only by maybe 20-30 seconds, but an improvement all the same!

The great thing about our local course is that its mixed terrains and levels, from grass to dirt tracks to concrete paths, with uphills and downhills, so it really covers everything, and although most races tend to be fairly flat, it prepares us for all eventualities and works different muscles for all round effectiveness!

We’ve (rather spontaneously) entered a 10k next Sunday, and we’re hoping to beat our previous record for a race, which is 1 hr 7 mins, but its looking like its gonna be hot, hot, hot, and its mid-afternoon, eurgh!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 14

This week an important lesson was learnt.

Never EVER wear new/different shoes on the day of a race.

I mean it.

If you’ve been following our training, you’ll know that this week was going to be the week we hit the big distance. We decided to forgo the 12.5 mile target and hit the big 13.1, set our first PB and feel super about doing it..

We didn’t. And I’m not going to lie, it was entirely my fault, which I hate.

I have two pairs of trainers that I run in: a pair of Nikes, which I’ve done the majority of my running over the last year or so in, and a pair of Karrimor running shoes which I use on and off, but not very often, so I’ve been trying to use them more recently to wear them in a little more and check their suitability. I wore them for all our runs last week and they were totally fine; a lot more lightweight than my Nikes and slightly more supportive of my feet.

So I figured why not wear them this weekend? We set off bright and early yesterday morning, and totally opposite to our last big distance, the weather was sunny, not much wind and for 7.30/8am, it was super warm, and by super warm I mean sweaty hot. But we continued to run into the heat of the morning sun, keeping a good pace, and hit the 5 mile mark in a record time (for us, obviously) of 57 minutes, which was a great feeling and could only mean good things for the rest of the run..

And then we hit 6 miles, and the blisters formed.. A runner’s nightmare, and all because I wore the wrong shoes. I’d never run more than 4-5 miles in my Karrimors, and the result of going past that point meant I quite literally have blisters upon blisters, in the same place on both feet. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the shoes are bad, I’m just stressing the importance of proper testing of shoes before a big race because I’d hate anyone else to have to give up mid-run, or do any serious damage to their feet.

I’m totally gutted we weren’t able to do it this week, but with plenty of training time to go, its not the end of the world!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 13

A quick one for a quick week..

We only ran twice this week, mainly due to recovering from last week’s trek of a distance. Wednesday was a free run; we did about 45 minutes, making up the route as we went along, but that works pretty well for us!

Yesterday we did something a little different, and took part in our local ParkRun. ParkRun is a worldwide scheme that organises free local running events, and our local one is just 5 minutes from our house so we figured we’d give it a go. Its completely free to take part; you just need to register online beforehand to receive your barcode, which is how your times are logged, and then just show up at the right place at the right time. Our local course is a 5k that takes place every Saturday morning.

It was great! Firstly, we couldn’t believe how many took part, almost 400 people! Secondly, the range of people was pretty astonishing; serious runners, fun-runners, parents with kids, people with dogs etc.. There was even a women who ran the whole thing pushing two kids in a double-pushchair! But the most amazing thing was our time: we did it in 31 minutes, which is a pace of almost 10km/h, and definitely a personal best (last year I did the Race for Life 5k in 37 minutes).

Next week the programme says to finish the week with 12.5 miles, but because of how easily we did our 11 miles last week, we’re just gonna go ahead and complete the extra 0.6 miles to make it the full distance, just to say we’ve done it, set our first time and then we know where we stand. Super exciting!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 12

Another week of running, another week closer to the main event!

Yesterday was another big run – 11 miles! And d’you know what? It was easy. Well, that’s not entirely true; we ran the first half into what I like to call ‘brick wall wind’ (because it literally feels like you’re running into a brick wall), and there was a sand-in-the-eye incident, as well as a little bit of rain on the way back.. But running wise, we really got into our stride, if you pardon the pun.

Because both Dad and I had a little bit of calf pain in the week, we thought we’d be better off doing regular run-walk-run intervals, which once we hit the wind, we were eternally grateful for! So the first half (into the brick wall wind) we ran for 0.4 miles, then walked 0.1, and then on the way back we did 0.9 and walked 0.1, and we averaged a steady 5 miles an hour the whole way through, finishing the total distance in 2hrs 13mins. That in itself was an incredible accomplishment, but even better was knowing that we could have easily kept going for another two miles!

We nailed everything, from the time of day for good (by which I mean not too warm) weather, to eating a good breakfast that had us energised, but not feeling stodgy, and even having on-course snacks of a wine gum every few miles. For the first time I think we know that not only can we do it, but we’re easily going to do it in a great time: sub 2hrs 30!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 11

We’re over the halfway point of our training programme, which seems beyond crazy – I swear we’ve only just started?!

I’m gonna keep it relatively short this week as I updated you guys on quite a lot earlier this week. The key point this week is that we’ve registered for both of our Disney World races (5k and half marathon), so everything just got totally real, although registration for the Star Wars weekend at Disneyland California doesn’t open until June, but even that’s only 5 weeks away now!

Running wise it’s been a fairly boring week; we only ran twice because we couldn’t find the time until towards the end of the week, and we really didn’t push ourselves much at all. Personally I’ve had a week of ups and downs, the ups being all the excitement of registration and planning, and the downs being fitness-wise; with all the running, plus all the time I’m spending at the gym at the moment, I think my body’s been a bit overwhelmed and needs recovery time, so I’m going to take it easy this coming week. I’ve also been getting a lot of headaches, especially in the last few days which I’m putting down to dehydration, so I just need to keep an eye on things.

Rest is just as important as training!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 10

Just a quick update tonight because I’m exhausted, and because I’ve just got in pretty late from seeing the new Avengers film! (its awesome guys, go see it)

I’m exhausted because today we ran 9.5 miles! Mega distance right?! Well its not our goal but it is, once again, the furthest distance we’ve run to date. Last week I wrote about how excited I was that our training really seems to be paying off as we’re improving massively, and I’m pleased to report that wasn’t a fluke week! We skipped our first run of the week because my ankle was feeling a little fragile and I didn’t want to do any damage, but we made up for it with an awesome mid-week run (we kept going way further than we needed to), and absolutely smashing previous records today: we hit 5 miles in our fastest time yet, and completed the whole 9.5 miles in 1 hr 56, when we were expecting a time of just over 2 hours.

Tuesday is sign up day, so wish us luck! We’ll be applying for the half marathon, and with any luck we’ll also manage to get spots on the 5k, but its not the end of the world if we don’t.

Eeek!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 9

Almost halfway through our programme, whaaa!?

So after my spending my last update moaning, and despite having last week off training, we absolutely smashed it this week. Mmhm, that’s how we do.

Something just clicked into gear. For starters, we’ve stopped pre-planning our routes, running three new, different courses. The beauty of this really was not knowing how far we were from home, where was halfway etc, meaning we pushed ourselves further, without knowing comfortable places to stop for a quick walk. It also meant we ran a few different terrains; uphill, downhill, parks, gravel paths etc, instead of smooth, flat routes.

Another improvement was, despite the week off, we hit the ground running (literally!) and while previously taking breaks has left us a little lethargic and made getting back into it a bit trickier, I felt great from run 1. It may be from spending more time at the gym, cleaning up my eating habits a bit, or just improving my training mentality a bit, but this week has just felt so much easier than previous weeks. I was running further, faster and feeling less of an aftermath.

Basically, I’m pretty happy this week! Sign up for our first race is a week Tuesday, and at the moment we’re on track for a time of about 2.5 hours, which is great!

Keep running folks °o°

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 8

Well I am pooped.

Today we ran 8 miles, once again setting our furthest distance run to date, and we did it in 1 hour 41 minutes. Looking at previous run paces, its a little down on where we should be, but given that Dad missed the 6.5 miler two weeks ago, skipping up to 8 miles was always going to be a bit of a shock to his body and we were never going to beat our best pace, but we weren’t actually too far off: we hit 5 miles in 59 mins, which was just two minutes slower than I’ve done before, and bearing in mind a section of the route we did was very steep uphill, I’m pretty happy with today’s effort.

We’ve had a few problems this week, mainly due to becoming far too relaxed in our training, bordering on lazy. Once we find a route, we tend to run the same one for every midweek training run, and because of this we’ve been getting into the habit of stopping for walking breaks more frequently than we should, and also not pushing ourselves to the full distance we should be running; our midweek runs should be based on running for 30 minutes, rather than a specific distance, but instead we’ve just been doing 2/3 miles and calling it a day, which sometimes is only 20 minutes run time.

We’re also resting too heavily on our walk/run/walk training programme, recommended by RunDisney coach Jeff Galloway, the idea of which being that its ok to walk when you’re tired, because it prevents injury and actually keeps you running at a faster pace than if you try and push through the pain. That said, however, in an ideal world we should be running at least 2/3 miles before needing to take walk breaks, whereas at the moment our lazy habits mean we’re walking 2/3 times in a 2/3 mile run. I know that we’re still not at our fittest, so mistakes are allowed, and we’ve still got ages to go til the races, but I feel like we really should be pushing ourselves more, instead of slacking off.

Ok, rant over..

Next week we’re going to have another week off official training as Mum and Dad are going to be away Monday-Thursday, but I’m going to do a bit of solo training so as not to lose momentum. Until next time!

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RunDisney 2016: Training Week 7

Yeah we might have skipped last week.. Dad was still recovering from his shin splints and I thought my body could do with a rest, so we had a break and continued this week..

Which wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, yay! If anything was difficult it was probably the mental side of getting back into the swing of things, but we managed all three runs with no real difficulty, although we did take it slowly to start with, just to test the water. The weather in Bournemouth has been a bit up and down this week, not that we let it stop us, but running in sunshine is certainly a lot nicer than rain!

In my week off I spent time working a little on my core as I’ve read in a few places that a strong core helps prevent the dreaded stitches that I suffer from quite regularly. I’ve only really done a couple of different exercises, but I am starting to notice a difference which is promising!

Next week we take on 8 miles, which for me is only 1.5 miles more than last week, but Dad missed the 6.5 mile distance so we’ll probably take it a little slower. This coming week marks the start of April, which means we’re less than one month from our first sign up, and we’re going to be looking at booking our flights, so there’s much to look forward too, eek!

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RunDisney 2016 – Training Week 6

So Dad has shin splints..

We did our first run of the week just fine, but now he’s out for the count for the next week or so, so I did the second short run by myself. I think I probably ran a little bit faster, but it meant I pushed a little too hard and had to talk an extra walk break.

This week’s big distance run was 6.5 miles, or 10.46km, making it the furthest distance I’ve run yet. Dad joined me for this one on his bike, which meant I could run at my own pace and push harder when I wanted to. I ran it quite comfortably, although my stitches got pretty bad at times, so I definitely think that I need to work out ways to keep them away while running.

So two weeks ago when we ran 5 miles we did it in about 1hr 5, and when I hit the 5 mile point yesterday I did it in 57 minutes, so that was a definite improvement. The total run time was 1hr 15, which is 8 minutes slower than our 10km record, so there’s room for improvement, but it was still a good solid time. I felt alright this morning, and even after a 9 hour shift at work, but I was stupid enough to risk going to the gym after work, and now my legs are killing and I’m not sure I’ll be able to walk tomorrow!

Fortunately this week I’ve only got 3 miles to do, so I need to start concentrating on getting my time down on those shorter runs.

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