2013 Walt Disney World ½ Marathon Recap!

2013 proved to be a very special WDW Marathon weekend.  It was the 20^th anniversary of the WDW Marathon and I would be sharing the weekend with my good running friends – some of which were running their first ½ marathon EVER and first full marathon EVER and their first GOOFY Challenge EVER!  

See below for my video Recap of the 2013 WDW Half Marathon.

Unfortunately, my family did not accompany me on this Marathon weekend trip since they were a little Disney’ed out (WHAT?!!!!  HOW?!!!!) from spending three full vacation weeks in the World in 2012 and the last trip in November, for a Disney Wedding, so it was just the girls!

During WDW Marathon Weekends I choose to stay at Disney’s Old Key West villas so I can “sleep in” until 4am and walk the ½ mile to the corrals. 

The weather for Marathon Weekend was going to be beautiful with highs in the 80’s!  This would be fabulous if you were just park touring, but bad, very bad, if you are running Goofy Challenge!  Running in the heat is something not taken lightly and Disney had issued weather alerts for the races.  

Since I was running the Goofy, I planned on going for a PR at the half since I can normally finish the distance using Galloway’s 3:1 (run 3 minutes and then walk for 1 minute) at 2:16.  For this weekend, I had trained and planned to run 2 minutes and walk 30 seconds and decided to try and break 2:15 for the half to set a new PR.  Since I had run the course 3 consecutive years I knew that I would have to race sunrise if I were going to have a chance of making my goal.

We woke to temps in the 60’s and humidity at 100%.  YUCK!  Actually it was pleasant since all the humidity in the air felt like a cool mist, however, you can see from my photos and video that it was really affecting my body.  

 At the 5K split my pace was 10:18 with an ETA of 2:15:07 – AWESOME!  I felt good although I was really sweating!  At the 10K split my pace had dropped to 10:35 and I knew it was time to pick up the pace and I decided to turn it on…….however, the sun was coming up and this coupled with the high humidity proved to be too much.  I finished with a disappointing pace of 2:19:30.  This was disappointing since I FELT that I was flying and I was really working – HARD!  But unfortunately the weather did not help my cause and a PR was not meant to be.

Once through the finish the sweat continued to pour down my face so much that I was unable to see since it was stinging my eyes!  The Disney volunteers quickly came to my aid with a towel!  Much love goes out to these wonderful volunteers!!!  

Janice was right behind me and we celebrated our first race to Goofy together!  We then got massages at the Massage Tent and then went up into the stands to watch the rest of our group and Joey Fatone cross the finish of the 2013 Walt Disney World ½ Marathon!