Tower of Terror 10 miler. Hot and Heavy.
My husband has a big birthday at the end of this week.
Really big.
And great wife that I am thought what would be good way to celebrate?
Go run 10 miles starting at 10 p.m.
At Walt Disney World.
Goofy and silly and something we would have done long ago when we were dating.
We got up Saturday morning and headed to the expo.
Here’s the birthday boy with his shirt. This shirt was a rare exception to the rule that any race my husband runs guarantees a incredibly stupid shirt.
These were not bad at all.
Then fun moment of expo.
I saw people lined up to chat with Jeff Galloway.
I’ve followed his running advice for years — so I did something very rare.
I stopped and waited. And waited. And since it was just the two of us, I didn’t have a worry in the world that some impatient child would start to whine.
It was wonderful.
After picking up our number, we got to the hotel.
Headed out to the pool and hung out.
Pretty nice.
Then we took a little nap and woke up at 8 pm and walked to Hollywood Studios for the race.
My husband loved the fact that it was night time. For most other races, it would have been dark because it would have been five in the morning.
I’m sorry that I don’t have any photos taken during the race because this carnage happened Friday afternoon.
I’m still pretty heartsick about it so I didn’t bother with it on the 10 mile race considering it was taking it with me on a run that resulted with it looking like this in the first place.
So —
We got to the start line and after lots of Disney fireworks and hoopla . . .
We took off.
It was hot and very humid. I knew about mile three we had better slow down.
The race course wound around to the Braves spring training field and we got to run around that — which was cool.
But leaving the Wild World of Sports Complex heading back with three miles to the finish…my dear hubby wasn’t doing so good.
He felt sick.
And looked it.
Great. Of course this made me feel bad for him, so we walked — which was fine. Though honestly, by this point I was pretty miserable in the heat and wanted the thing over with.
But we finished together.
I went and got him a Tylenol.
After that and a lager he seemed in better spirits.
I’ve done tons of these Disney races– fulls, triathlons and halfs — and this was by far the most I’ve seen people affected by the heat.
Not trying to be negative, just honest. I wish we had trained more for a 13 mile distance rather than 10. Ten doesn’t sound like much but when you are running in a sauna your energy is sapped fast.
That said it was a great time. And cool medals with a little moving elevator.
Hubby rallied and we rode the rides and didn’t get back to our room till after 4 a.m.
Only to retrieve a voice message from the front desk that our car had been damaged in the hotel parking lot. (But that is another post entirely.)
I’d certainly do it again.
You’d have to ask my husband for his answer. I already think I know his answer.
What about you? Do you like to run at night?
You should have posted picture of me afterwards. I thought it would be my obituary shot.
I am so impressed! I can barely stay awake past 10, let alone run a race starting at 10. To give you an idea, we stayed up extra late to take advantage of a 9 p.m. half-price appetizers deal our son told us we “had to try.” We were the oldest people in the restaurant, and we couldn’t get over how many people were out at that time of night in big city Portland, Maine (how’s that for an old-sounding statement?). But to run a race? Wow. Happy Birthday!
Well Johnny, it’s not as bad as your driver’s license photo.
Thanks Julia, I’ll pass along your good wishes to the birthday boy. It was a young crowd. But we hung tough. It was fun. My husband will love talking about this for years to come.
Congrats, I know it was hot at 5am Saturday so I know it was even worse at 10pm. I think part of it is our bodies just aren’t
used to that kind of exertion that late- not to mention nutrition planning is difficult. Well done.!
Thanks Michelle. I agree that the eating thing was tricky. I probably should have eaten more before. The funny thing was we had dinner reservations at 7 pm the next night — and I still wasn’t hungry even though the only thing I had eaten was a little bit of my race snack box and a few pretzels during the day. Same with John. Weird.
I much prefer running at night – or the very early hours of the morning.
My first ever race was the Honolulu marathon. I trained in the Napa Valley at the close of Fall and the opening of winter. Flew to Hawaii and ran (ummm, yeah right) 26.2 miles in that awful, awful humidity. Ouch! I remember standing at mile 24, looking up the incline towards Diamond Head thinking that all I wanted was some chicken and for someone to wipe the tears (errrr, sweat) away. LOL
Mary, when I was younger and in college and grad school I ran at night. It was hard for me to gear up for a morning 5K. Then when my children are young I ran almost exclusively in the dark of the early morning. Actually, I’ve got a dark-o-thirty running date with friends tomorrow morning. I guess it was the humidity more than anything combined with temps. Twenty-six point two in Honolulu. That is impressive.
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