I signed up for the Disneyland 5k back in the winter time and knew it was a long ways away but kept up all summer going for 2 and 3 mile runs even during the weekdays. I couldn’t seem to get past running a 9:30 mile, and really tried to get it closer to a nine minute mile to beat my personal record (PR). Going into race day i was faced with a dilemma of racing by myself or walking with Joy since she’s pregnant, and my sister still sore from her minor surgery the week before. I planned on walking part of the race with them and running the last two miles.
Race morning I woke up at 3:30am to get ready and drive to Cerritos to pick up my sister, and get to Disneyland by 5:00am for our lineup. While waiting for our corral to be released i was still figuring out what to do, but once we were off, i said screw it and decided to walk the course too. I didn’t want to be left out of all the pictures i knew were going to be taken, but it was really hard not to just start jogging with so many other people really running. The other thing that made me feel better was that we weren’t given a timing chip so everything was basically off the record since it was just a “fun run.”
The course layout was entirely inside the ground of Disneyland, California Adventures, and Downtown Disney, and the first time we ran through, Joy was going as fast as possible, but this year we took our time and even back tracked a few times to get another picture. The course started off by going down Disney way that led to the back of DCA and we entered right next to Cars Land.
We stopped along with a bunch of other people to snap a shot in front of Radiator Springs Racers.
Then a stop in front of the the World of Color fountains. Where we almost didn’t get this shot because we had a cast member try 4 times and didn’t even take one picture. Thankfully we checked and got another runner to take an actual picture.
Then it was off to Disneyland where we circled the castle through Fantasyland, and Frontierland where we found Chip and Dale. Finally the home stretch had us run through Critter Country and out the back to head back towards Downtown Disney.
I had plenty of energy so i did a lot of slow motion running next to Joy, and some running forward and circling back to Joy to get my kicks in, but when we finally crossed the finish line my overall time for the 3.1 miles was slower than what it took me to run my 10k (6.2 miles) back in February with a time of 1:04:11.
Here we are with our Alice and Wonderland medals.
