It's all un poco loco… wine & dine 2022 recap
Instead of jumping right into the magic I figure first I’ll start with a bit of housekeeping for the past few months
August 2022:
Marathon a month time 7:17:56
Badges {with fit life ended and no streakers I didn’t make a badge post this month I did earn my 12,000 + 13,000 progress badge)
September 2022:
Marathon a month time 8:42:54
Badges
October 2022:
Marathon a month time 8:34:48
Badges {like with August there were no streakers so I just got my 16,000 + 17,000 progress badges}
The final challenge update (well aside from my overall run the year progress which I will share at the end with my upcoming race calendar current PRs) is a perfect segue with THE GREATEST RACE AROUND WDW- This challenge ended in early September with my overall mileage tracked being 101.31 and my ending point being a rather unmagical underpass This was followed up by THE MOST MAGICAL VIRTUAL RACE ON EARTH where my current mileage is 66.94 and my current stop as of the end of this race weekend is just outside of Space Mountain
And now for my Wine and Dine Weekend Recap. This is my sixth in person Wine and Dine and Ninth in person RunDisney event and so I’d like to say I’m old hat when it comes to how things go down however like with Big Brother, RunDisney has a bit of an expect the unexpected mantra to it and a few days before the event was to happen it was announced there was a VQ that would be in play for Day One of the merchandise area. And so with a bit of finagling to get into that 45 mile range (despite maps saying we had been 34 miles away from Wide World of Sports) we managed to snag shopping group 50 at just after the queue opening at 7:30. At this time the estimated shopping time we were given was 10:35 am which was great considering the area opened at 8:30 for the highest tier of ‘running club’ members and 10 for the general VQ
We arrived at Wide World of Sports at 11am on the dot and at this time that 10:35am estimated shopping time had been moved back to 11:45 and so we headed toward the field house to snag out bibs. The line for the fieldhouse was wrapped around the side of the building and from getting into the queue, getting inside the building, grabbing bibs for both the 5K & 10K and making a stop in a restroom it was just shy of a half hour total. Checking our shopping time it had now bumped back to 12:07 and a slight sense of internal worry settled in.
Like with Springtime Surprise this weekend did not have preorders and when we got into shop back in April at around 12:15 there were pretty limited 5K items left and Coco is definitely a more popular IP than the Expedition Everest attraction.
We headed into the Visa center to grab shirts which only took about 10 mins and by the time we walked back toward the Arena it was time to scan our merch pass to enter the building.
By 12:11 we had made it into the “room of dreaded tape lines” with the line stretched about ¼ of the way through one side of the room and we were into the merch area, shopped and checked out by 1pm.
I ended up with the logo pin, medal pin and magnet for both distances which was my goal as well as a weekend logo shirt and headband.
Once we got into the photo area they had the mileage markers
As well as the exciting site of characters being back. I had heard online prior that it was going to be Genie which made sense as he was the ‘host’ of the two course challenge this year as well as a “New” character…
The suspense was killing me…who was this new character? 5K ‘host’ Miguel who has only appeared in Cavalcades, 10K ‘host’ Raya who has never appeared in Florida parks yet, or Half ‘host’ Joe Gardner who hasn’t appeared in any parks international or domestic at all.
It turned out that ‘new’ character ended up being Disney Juniors Mira Royal Detective which made little sense as kids races were still not back and she had no ties to any of the themes and this would be the only place she’d appear all weekend. As Genie had a 30 ish minute wait and there were maybe two or three parties total waiting for Mira I took a pic
All and all it took about 2.5 hours total from arriving to departing and the weekend has officially begun!!!
Waking up bright and early at 2AM Friday morning it was time for the first event of the weekend the Fall Feast 5K. The theme for this race was the Disney/Pixar film Coco and for my OOTD/Costume I drew inspiration from the character mama Imelda.
Outfit components consisted of a purple skort made of performance fabric, a black ‘reel legends’ shirt with iron on vinyl skeleton bones and excess fabric as a ruffle, a dia de los Muertos headband from Joanne Fabrics and another dia de los Muertos wicking headband from bondi band. I did have an apron I made but opted against it the morning of.
We left our room at about 2:45 am and was at the bus area at 2:50. We were loaded on the second bus lined up at around 2:55. We pulled out of the hotel at 3:02 am and arrived at the Epcot staging area at 3:15 am.
After a stop at the restrooms and the walk toward the staging area like with the expo there were actual characters at the start once more instead of just photo backdrops. At first glance we spotted Miguel, Jose, and Panchito and we assumed the fourth spot was Donald. We decided to hop in Miguel’s line around 3:35 and it was capped maybe a dozen people after us. While we were waiting the 50ish minutes in the queue we saw via Instagram that it was NOT Donald in that fourth spot but actually Mirabel from Encanto.
For whatever reason I was seeded in coral B while Jessica and Orlando were in C. While this race wasn’t timed I decided that I wouldn’t bump back and instead would race ahead and text Jessica what characters were on course and when/if I’d be waiting on one.
Soon it was my turn to cross the starting line as I began my trek around the Epcot Parking Lot.
The first mile began with some Coco clips playing on a screen at .60 miles however not much further than this I actually received a character text from my sister who was still waiting at the start. “Carissa just said Duffy the Disney Bear was on Course” and so it was instantly decided that I would forgo any characters that I would encounter until then and hop into his line (provided it wasn’t so long it was already capped)
The rest of the mile consisted of a singer before I reached mile marker 1…fitbit had me at 1.03 in 16:06 mins
In the next mile there was a marching band before finally arriving inside Epcot around 1.23 miles.
There was a Mariachi Band in Mexico and Olaf in Norway but my heart was set on finding Duffy. After the races only water stop at about 1.62 in the American Adventure Pavilion I made it into Japan and got into the line for Duffy. I had waited about 10 minutes before my sister caught up to me. It was another 10 minute wait before we were finally there
At this point my Fitbit had jumped from 1.70 miles to 2.04 miles with all the weaving…
Once we were back on the road in the showcase we passed Remy and Emile in France and while the race was untimed and thus we could afford another 20+ character wait as there was no threat of being swept we decided it would be in our best interest to try for someone a bit rarer post race (We met Emile at 2016’s 10K and Remy is a Wine and Dine course regular) There was a second screen looping the Un Poco Loco scene from Coco again before we reached mile marker 2
At marker 2 the fitbit had me at 2.47 miles and an elapsed time of 55:34 (35:34 running miles)
After this there was a DJ and Mexico Donald.
As we left the showcase I had to snap a selfie (well Jess took the pic) with the Figment Statue
While Donald was the last character we were plenty entertained by the Jamminators, the marching band from earlier and a gospel choir before finally reaching mile marker 3.
Fitbit had me at 3.59 miles with a time of 1:13:36 (53:36 running miles)
Mariachi Mickey was waving from the scaffolding as we finished the course
While there was no official timing for this race I clocked in at a finish time of 1:15:28 (55:28 running time) which has been pretty on par with my 5K timing post 2020
By the time we made our way though the finisher shoot and reunited with my brother in law it was around 6:42 and we headed toward the Mirabel line. We were told we could stay in line but wouldn’t be guaranteed a meeting so I sent my sister to check if it was the same instance with Jose or Panchito and if not to get into one of those lines. Jose was the same thing but Panchito was not and so I hopped toward that line and waited about 25 mins for the meet
After this we made our way toward the parking lot where my brother in law drove us back to the resort where we showered and chilled a bit before heading toward the parks
And just like that at 2am Saturday morning we rinsed and repeated and were back for our second and final event of the weekend. The theme for this race was Raya and the Last Dragon however this time I didn’t go on theme…exactly. Instead of going the Raya route I figured with her being the newest Disney Princess and the fact that four of five in person Wine and Dine 10K’s I’ve done I dressed as a Disney Princess or Queen I’d go that route and so I drew inspiration from Moana.
Outfit components consisted of an orange ‘Tek Gear’ tank hand panted as well as the brown skort previously used for my Chip costume for last years Wine & Dine and Cinderella during Marathon Weekend to accessorize I had a moana inspired headband from Crown Athletics as well as made my own heart of tafiti out of shrinky dinks and yarn.
We were at the bus at around 2:53 and the busses had already begun loading. We just made it onto bus number 3 and we pulled out of the parking lot at 3am on the dot. We arrived at Epcot at around 3:14 am and had already seen on instagram that Raya was out making her Florida debut along with Baloo, Lilo, and Minnie in a Polynesian inspired outfit. I had to pause to tie my shoe and told Jess to walk ahead and pick any line that wasn’t Raya…
She chose Minnie and it was about a 15 min wait
Next we decided to move on over toward Baloo who had been in the other spot on that side of the DJ Stage. We were told as we got in line that it was an estimated 30 min wait and there was no guarantee of meeting but it was early and we thought we would just monitor the time and bail if needed. WITH a break it was 15 mins
From there we arrived at the coral.
We had heard that for the 10K it would be A-E so we felt comfortable with our pre-race lingering, however as we walked over we noticed it was in fact A-D and we were in last coral. It seems like with putting 12:01-14 mins as a projected pace it’s definitely a crapshoot as to weather we are in the last coral or somewhere in the middle.
The race hosts kept harping to hydrate hydrate hydrate as the weather was in the low-mid 70s and it was rather humid. They didn’t get the memo that electrolyte beverages were only provided at the finisher shoot for the 10K and runners were not too happy when they found out that there was NOT power aid at the water stops despite the hosts harping runners to take it.
Speaking of hosts…Carissa was running and John was already waiting at the finish so Riley and Tracy had free reign over the commentating.
The goal was to start trying to build a bit of a buffer between us and the balloon ladies at least the first few miles which was honestly hard on me as while I was in the corals I swallowed and some saliva got caught down the wrong pipe causing me to have some breathing issues until I arrived at the first water stop…than all was fine…
As far as entertainment on course entertainment went we passed our first of many many DJ stations as well as a photo spot for Mulan which we spotted as we had pulled into the parking lot earlier in the day.
Mile 1 was reached in 15:25 (1.04)
Our next character stop was Hyacinth Hippo and if she were after the 5K mark I would 100% of waited for her however we still hadn’t reached that first water stop and so I was panting a bit and we didn’t know just how many more waves after us the balloon ladies had crossed the start (though despite the humidity it did seem like it was slower between waves than other years) After Hyacinth there was a marching band followed by King Louie.
There was a TV screen looping a scene from Raya and FINALLY the first water stop.
I was refreshed and not choking as mile 2 appeared 32:05 (2.11)
Okay…we are a third of the way there time to celebrate with another DJ and a Pluto character stop which was the second location we had spotted from the bus diving in. Then there was a LOOOOONG Line for Mickey dressed in a Polynesian inspired outfit complementing the one Minnie wore in the staging area.
After Mickey was the turn to climb up that hill er overpass where there was an obligatory Green Army Man before we reached mile marker 3 49:38 (3.16) my OFFICIAL 3 mile split was 49:28 so only a ten second discrepancy from my FitBit
And for the record my official 5K time was 50:52 so five minutes shy of my ‘running time’ from the day before's event.
There was a band and the second water stop before we headed into Studios and were met with Classic Sailor Suit Donald
Going down sunset it was a true 4*Town Dance Party not that I’ll complain
Reached mile 4 outside the park 1:08:27 (4.26)
Just past the marker Mushu was meeting as since we were in a comfortable place and his line was super short we got in line for him
That stop was about three minutes and we were ready to reach the final stretch.
As we headed down the path toward the boardwalk we were met with another DJ as well as some signs featuring inspiring Walt quotes and some fun Food Puns
Once we reached the Boardwalk I noticed a fun themed sign on the marque of “Atlantic Dancehall” perched just above where Goofy was meeting in this 50th outfit
Shortly after this was mile marker 5 1:30:49 (5.42) running miles were 1:27:49
There was another musician off to the side as we finally entered the home stretch into Epcot as well as a screen showing the Sorcerer's Apprentice clip from Fantasia. Shortly after the screen was a final DJ and the final water stop.
Classic Chip & Dale met by the gate of ‘World Showplace’ and they would be the final stop of the course.
Since I was dressed as Moana I had Jess take my picture with the Hei Hei and Pua statue that was adjacent to the course.
The Jamminators were located where they were yesterday and just a dip backstage brought me to the final mile marker. 1:49:39 (6.54) 1:46:39 running miles
The Gospel Choir and Mickey doing some wibbly wobbly timey wimey stuff now wearing a Hawaiian shirt on the finish line scaffolding ended the race
My Fitbit recorded me at 6.79 miles as I finished with a time of 1:53:26 (official was 1:53:27 so off by only a second!!!!) with my 10K PR being 1:42:52 that’s not too terrible.
By the time we made it out of the finisher shoot we saw that the estimated wait for Raya was 85 mins while Lilo was 15. We waited for Lilo and than headed out
UPCOMING RACES:
Foam Glow 5K 12/3 (rescheduled from October)
Hot Chocolate 10K 12/18
Castaway Cay 5K fun run (possibly) 1/18
Gasparilla 15K 2/25
Gasparilla 8K 2/26
Springtime Surprise 5K 4/14 costume reveal
Springtime Surprise 10K 4/15
Springtime Surprise 10 Miler 4/16
RUN THE YEAR
1,799.93/2022
PRs
1M {15:26} 3K {30:59} 5K {42.46} 8K {1:13:59} 10K {1:42:52} 15K {2:19:09} HALF {3:54:55} FULL {7:08:15*} *virtual full run in increments
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