Running on Vacation

My sister Jenn and I woke up at 5:30 a.m. for our 6:15 a.m. 15k run on Sunday. I was feeling a little tired, since I went to bed at midnight, but was pretty energized for the race. Up until race morning I had been pretty nervous about running 9.3 miles. I even tried to convince my sister to run a 5k instead. I know I’ve run a half-marathon before, but with work being so crazy I hadn’t gotten to train very much for the run and was nervous that I would get picked up during the race by the “slow patrol,” (the van that picked up runners who were going to slowly). The morning of the race, however, I was pretty excited.

The race started at Disney's Epcot Park and had you going on the highway to Hollywood Studios and then to the Animal Kingdom. It was neat getting to run places that you wouldn’t otherwise get to go. We ran on the highway, which they closed down for the race. We also ran through the parks before they opened. We got to see the back sections of the park and got to see them before they were bustling with people. I loved it. It was also fun to have all the Disney employees telling us how fabulous we were and how great we were doing, even if they didn’t truly believe it they did a good job pretending like they did.

Thinking about the run now makes me sorta teary eyed. With Jenn living so far away, we don’t get to see each other much, and it was really fun getting to do a run with her. I was really proud to be running with my sister. We had team tags designating that we were a sister/sister team and when ever we would pass someone I would be proud that they were seeing the tags on our backs and that they knew we were running together.
I was also proud of how we did. We were not fast, but what we lacked in speed we made up for in consistency. Jenn and I kept a very consistent 11 minute mile pace. Every time we passed a mile marker it had been almost exactly 11 minutes. At mile one we heard 11 minutes, at two miles 22 minutes, at three miles 33 minutes etc. It was neat that we never fell from our pace. We finished the race in 1 hour and 39 minutes, which included a more than needed potty break. Overall, Jenn finished 962/2632 and I finished 980/2632. Not bad if you ask me. I don’t know what other runs I plan on doing, but I certainly plan on running more of them with my sister as my wingman.