Tinker Bell Half Marathon 2012

Friday expo time
Work has been very busy since December. But I managed to leave work early on Friday afternoon to attend the Tinker Bell half marathon expo at the Disneyland Hotel Exhibit Hall. From the very beginning, this race was different. The expo was more girly than usual. I bought a pair of orange fairy wings from the Team Sparkle booth. I asked how they should be worn. The girl was telling me how I should pin the wings to my singlet and tie the loops around my sports bra. Okay, yeah, I'll do that. :) I also picked up my friend's race packet. The difference in the race shirt was that the women had v-necks.

I visited my friends at the RunRacing booth before leaving. They gave me a hard time for the wings. Good thing I didn't buy some ruffles or a sparkly headband. :)

RunRacing booth - Run Long Beach!

Sunday pre-race
Race morning, I got to the Mickey and Friends parking structure at around 3:30am. For some reason parking was free. Very un-Disney-like to be free. I took a nap in the car and waited for my friends to show up. Once they did, I walked over to her car to give her the race packet. Then I went back to my car to get my stuff ready. Besides the orange World Vision singlet, I had with me the orange wings, orange Asics, and orange PowerAde. Gotta be color-coordinated for a women's race! :)

We walked over to the starting area which was the Lilo and Stitch parking lot. The line for my gear check was abnormally long. After we dropped off our gear bags, I put on the fairy wings. No, I didn't pin them to my singlet or tie anything. I just slipped my arms through each loop. It definitely put me out of my comfort zone wearing those wings, but what-the-heck I'm told that that's where the fun happens. We hit the portapotties and then walked over to the corrals.

Red Bull gives you wings! But I didn't drink any! :)

My friend and I stopped at corral C. My other friend went up to corral A to chase her PR. Then we separated because my friend wanted to do a warm-up jog. I had a feeling that the first mile would be a jog whether you want to or not. The announcer was trying to liven up corral A, saying A was for awesome. Corral B was for the best. I forget what they called corral C, but it was definitely C for crowded!

Corral C for crowded

The race
Sure I was uncomfortable waiting for the race to start, but once our corral was released, it was just another race. But it was one big clustersmurf with tons of walkers in front of you. I followed a faster girl on the median and we skipped a huge crowd of walkers. But there was still many many walkers to pass. Perhaps they need to be in corral W, for walkers. I kept thinking to myself that it was pretty ridiculous for them to start all guys in corral C. We came to a grinding halt at the first aid station. Even with my gimpy right leg, I'm still moving at least 3 to 5 mins faster per mile. Oh well, I'm sure they'll address that issue next year. It didn't clear up until we got outside on the streets of Anaheim. But I still had to manage the soreness in my right ankle and calf and make sure I did not push too hard. This race was pretty much one long fartlek. I felt the most comfortable on the uphills, so I tried to surge a bit on the flat and uphill sections. But I definitely had to take it easy on the downhills. I got to see my Team in Training friends right around mile 5. Miles 8 and 9 are usually when I lose concentration no matter how fast or how slow I run. But luckily one of my friends was there to motivate me to keep pushing. But still I had to walk a bit the next mile to help with the soreness. After that it was a short 5k jog to the finish through California Adventures. I found a girl running at about the same effort and pretty much just followed her to the finish line. Too bad she faded a lot on the last .1 mile. Maybe she thought it was over at mile 13.
1: 9:47
2: 10:13
3: 9:46
4: 9:51
5: 8:52
6: 9:15
7: 10:20
8: 9:39
9: 9:34
10: 11:03
11: 9:23
12: 10:05
13: 9:54
13.1: 0:59
Finish: 2:08:41

Post-race
I picked up my Tinker Bell and Coast-to-Coast medals, took a finisher's photo, and headed for the reunion area to meet up with my friends. This race concluded a very very long January. But I took it one race at a time and survived. I even managed to see some improvements.

I was pretty surprised to finish under 2:10. I was expecting around 2:15 at best. I thought maybe the course was a bit short. But my garmin-wearing friends said that it wasn't. :) Almost everyone that I've talked to after the race agreed with me that this course was better than the one for the Disneyland half marathon in September. I don't care much for the run out to the Honda Center parking lot and the little run through Angel Stadium. The wings didn't bother me one bit during the race. It was actually pretty funny to see them in your shadow as you're running.

The course

One of my friends that was dressed as Tinker Bell got interviewed before the race. My other friend dressed in hot neon pink got her picture in the OC Register. Me, I was just one of about 900 lucky "Tinker-fellas" to be chasing girls for about 2 hours. The final registration stats were 11080 women and 920 men, about a 12:1 ratio. Way too much estrogen in one place! ;)

Wings are required for this race, right? :)

My friends and I walked over to the Rainforest Cafe at Downtown Disney to eat some breakfast. I ordered a Bloody Mary and some breakfast sliders. I'm pretty sure the drink was virgin, because I didn't taste any vodka. Oh well, maybe it's just very watered down since they don't want drunk people walking around Disney property. The sliders were actually hard to put down because they were very dry. It needs a beef patty to grease it up a bit!

Rainforest Cafe - Bloody Mary 

Rainforest Cafe - Breakfast Sliders