Virtues of Pacing Yourself – Disney Princess Race Recap

Last December, I wrote about the painful experience that was the OUC half marathon. It was ugly. I was in pain. And frankly, it was an experience that I didn’t want to repeat. Looking back on that race, I know exactly what I did wrong. I went out too fast. WAY too fast. It’s another failing of mine – I’m impatient and I seem to think that I’m capable of more than mortal feats. Man, was I wrong and the OUC proved it.

Fast forward 3 months to the Disney Princess half marathon. My dear friend Kasey and I decided to run it together. We were back at Disney, where our inaugural marathon took place and we were very much looking forward to catching up with each other.

One thing that made this race different from the OUC half was that we were both coming into it with an injury. Kasey’s knee had been bothering her for about 10 months (on and off) and unfortunately, it had recently flared up during a 12 mile training run. I have been having issues with a lower calf strain and a tight hip flexor. In other words, we both feel about 60 years old when we stretch. It’s a common affliction of high levels of training.

This Disney race started off the same as the last one – 3:30am wake up time, arrive at the Epcot parking lot at 4:30, walk to the starting line at 5:30 (it was a 6am start). Since there were so many people running the race (14,000 for this one), Disney assigned individuals to different corrals based on proven or estimated start time. I had been placed in corral A due to my finishing time at the full marathon and Kasey had been placed in corral E (even though we had the same finishing time, she didn’t report the Disney full time).

Here we are waiting for the start.



Well, when we found out that (1) we couldn’t sneak Kasey into corral A, and (2) corral E didn’t have a start time until 6:28am (it was COLD outside!!), I talked Kasey into jumping the gate at corral B so that we would start at corral B. Yup, leave it up to the criminologist to talk Kasey into breaking the rules!

The runners waiting at the starting line.



Due to our rule breaking behavior, we got to start at 6:07am (after freezing and shivering for a short while) and we were off. And limping. And moaning. You see, for a lot of mild injuries, the first mile is the absolute worst, especially in the cold. It usually takes a bit to get your muscles and ligaments warmed up and until then, you limp and grunt your way through the pain. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

The good news is that because we were hobbling along so gingerly, we inadvertently paced ourselves at a slower rate than we would have if we had been 100%. By mile 3, I think we were both feeling decently warmed up and as the sun rose, we really started to enjoy the race and the beautiful day that was dawning. I have to say, the miles literally flew by. I couldn’t believe that they were coming up so quickly. This was due to one thing – good conversation. Have you ever been chatting on the phone with a good friend and hang up only to realize that an hour had gone by? For Kasey and I, running is the same way (well, at least it was after we stopped moaning long enough to chat).

Look, Cinderella's castle!



I wish that there was something more to be said for the middle part of the race, but truly, it was easy and breezy in its entirety. In fact, around mile 11, I had started to feel guilty that I wasn’t suffering more. Clearly, I wasn’t pushing myself hard enough, but truly, in my world, that’s what training is for. The race itself is just to have fun – Brother Dean would greatly disagree by the way.

Before we knew it, we were back in Epcot and in the last mile. We had a smile on our faces for the duration of the race and we kept up an easy banter throughout. It was about as much fun as I could have possibly have had on a Sunday morning at the crack of dawn.

So, the moral of the story is that if you go out slowly and conserve your energy, you’ll succeed in your event and you’ll have a better time doing it. I actually beat my time from the OUC half and that was including stopping for pictures and a potty break. Go us!