Luke Janik's Staging Area

If you are looking for a BQ and you want to ENJOY YOURSELF, find another race. The expo was small, the race swag is a cotton t-shirt, and I really don’t think coordinator cares about the runners, just the money! The course is beautiful but waiting for a train to cross for 8 minutes is not. Clearly there were some big communication issues with this race and this race will never regain my trust for me to do it again. Seriously avoid this race at all costs! I think the Erie marathon is the same weekend and not too far away, test your luck there.

This race is unique because it gives you an opportunity to run in places you never could otherwise.

The selling point of the race is you get to run through the Disney parks- don’t let that fool you, most of the running will be on the 4-lane roads/highways connecting all of the parks. Because it’s all highways, the course is super flat with the exception of on and off ramps and bridges. Also because of this, there were long stretches without any spectators (the parks however, were lined with spectators the whole way through). There are water/gatorade stops every mile with a Disney character at each (and a huge sign displaying the time) and that was encouraging.

If you are planning to RACE this half-marathon (or any of the races), make sure you put in a good seed time. They will put you in corrals based on your time. Unfortunately this was my first half-marathon and I had NO previous time, they put me in “I” (“A” was the fastest, “O” the slowest), and I eventually convinced them to put me in “B” (where I was still plowing through people for the first few miles). If you are running sub 1:20, you might end up in no man’s land after the halfway point, luckily my training partner was with me, but we passed a lot of people on their own.

You have to get up early- 3:15 at the latest. The race starts at 5:30, but you need to be there no later than 4:30 and the last shuttle leaves around 3:45 or maybe 4. Because of the early start, it was dark for the whole race (if you finish before 7 o’clock). Which is bad for two reasons- 1. you miss a lot of the scenery and 2. some of the turns inside the park (especially the last mile) are not obvious in complete darkness. The bright side is that the temperatures are fairly cool at this time of day (60’s to low 70’s).

If you are deciding whether or not to stay at a resort the weekend of your race, I can’t recommend it enough. The shuttles took us to and from the expos (and parks, obviously), and to the race and back. They had food the morning of the race at the cafeteria/restaurant if we wanted it.

If you want a “magical” experience for your first (or one-hundredth) race, choose this one!