This Weekend Had Character: Wine and Dine 2017 recap!
We arrived on Thursday about an hour/hour and a half ish after the expo opened and headed to the Field House to get our bibs... I was assuming with our numbers 1,683 numbers apart we'd either both be in coral E or I'd be in E while my sister/running buddy would be in F and I'd bump back to be with her as the whole point was for us to be together... I was in shock however while she was in F that I was in D (I still bumped back with the hope that I'm seeded the same come April with my solo 10K)
This year Bibs and official merch were in the same building and so I got my pre-ordered pin as well as a race magnet, race specific headband and the 2017 RunDisney headband
Next we headed across the street to JCenter to get out shirts and browse the vendor booths... while their we got a few photo ops as well as one with the big cheese himself
We didn't get any other items it was just fun to look around. While we'd been in line for Mickey I got a text saying to stop by the front desk of out hotel for Room Assignments and so we figured we'd make a pit stop to our room instead of heading to Animal Kingdom First. Check In went pretty smooth (they had us in a room with a King bed but were able to move us to a room with two doubles) it was the same building as last year just the third floor (I really hope staying at Pop for Dark Side is just as nice/accessible for race day transportation like All Star Movies has been)
Since this is a race report I'm not going to go into detail about our park time and so I'll just skip to Saturday.
We got up around 2AM and headed toward the bus around 3 so we could get on the first bus that pulled out around 330. This year the start was at Magic Kingdom and it finished at Epcot and I kind of liked the set up better as it wasn't as congested as it was with everything in the same place. I had to do bag check since this year I needed my running belt since my skirt didn't have pockets and it was quick and painless and the first bank of restrooms didn't even have a line yet and so I waited for those to beat the latter crowds.
At the start there were four Character queues. Mickey and Minnie and Goofy met on one side of the DJ stage while Chip and Dale and Donald met on the other...
After Donald it was just after 4:30 and so the corals opened up and we hung out near the front listening to the DJ until it was time for us to head out. We ended up being the first of 4 waves in our coral let out so we had plenty of cushion behind us....
The fist mile which was out fastest sped by... there was a marching band about a half a mile up the road but not much else. It was a pretty dark stretch of road but being that it was just a road with nothing to see my fitbit split was 13:42. Just after mile marker one there was a TV screen on the side of the road looping the Be Our Guest scene from the live action Beauty and the Beast making me think that a Beauty and the Beast character would be up ahead after all the first character stop last year was just after mile one. That wasn't the case as aside from the screen the only other thing before mile marker two was our first water stop. This mile clocked in at 14:21. As Mile three began the three little pigs were meeting on the side of the road...their line wasn't too crazy HOWEVER they were just heading back to switch out 'friends' and so it would be a good 5+ minute wait and while three characters in one stop would be a bargain it wasn't worth it and so we pressed on. A TV Screen and DJ set up later got us to mile marker 3 in 14:42 minutes. Just past this mile was the point I was dreading... the overpass ramp heading into Hollywood Studios. We persisted and were greeted at the 5K mark at the top by the infamous SARGE from Toy Story who while I think was also a photo stop calls out runners to drop and give him push ups thankfully we weren't victims to that though looking at my OFFICIAL 5K split it was only TEN SECONDS over my Mayfair 2016 PR. Still on this mile we rounded into Hollywood Studios and were met with a water stop and a long line...there was someone good and rare meeting in the Hollywood Hills Amphitheater and while I just on Thursday Afternoon was saying how I wish Oswald (along with Duffy and Friends) met regularly in Florida parks... I wasn't going to wait in line for Oswald just then though I did take a few pictures while running
After the Oswald stop and a REAL Bathroom where there was a pretty decent sized line as well there were a couple Tower of Terror Bellhops and we took a stop even though it wasn't an official photopass one (much like when we stopped last year for the stilt walking jesters)
We finally got to mile four and with the incline and the pausing for pictures my split climbed to 16:39.
As we moved through Studios photopass caught this great shot of my sister... sadly nothing fun of me
Once we left the park it was a tight squeeze through the parking lot and down the walking path toward Boardwalk making it near impossible to run or even speedwalk and jog really. There was another water stop and DJ set up as well as a really cool photo-op of the Full Moon lingering over Tower of Terror at dawn that held up traffic even more so causing my split on this mile to be 19:05 when I reached the Swan and Dolphin and mile marker five.
By then we felt safe as we rounded to the Boardwalk and shuffled and sped walk along not wanting to run or jog as we didn't wish to slip... as we approached vacation genie we had to choose... do we want to stop for a character thinking he'd be the last one on coarse or do we want to aim for a PR.... we chose the former
Rounding into Epcot, I pulled to the side to plug my phone in my charger block as with running the camera and my fitbit tracker I was at 18%. As I was plugging in we noticed Keni and Koda meeting in Canada with no line AT ALL. The Balloon Ladies were passing however since we were in Epcot already and well YOLO we stopped
There were a few photopass photographers after that but not much else until we approached mile marker six and were greeted with a gospel choir our six mile split was 24:06 but it was worth it
UNOFFICIALLY via my FitBit I ran 6.66 (I know spooky)in 1:53:21 with a 17 m/m even average
OFFICIALLY: at my 5K split my time was 45:13 at a 14:34 m/m average while my final 10K time was 1:52:26 with an 18:06 m/m average
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