Disney Wine & Dine Half Marathon take 2

So last year when I ran this race with my friend Chrissy it was our first half marathon. Here is my recap http://runningdownmainstreet.blogspot.com/2015/01/disney-wine-and-dine-half-marathon.html. In a nutshell last year the weather /running gods thought it would be fun to challenge us by raining on our entire first half marathon! We were sad and disappointed because we felt like some of the excitement about the day was taken over by fear about how we would handle not only our first big race but now running 13.1 miles while wearing ponchos in the rain! But we finished and were super proud of ourselves for it! Now months back when I decided to sign up for Wine and Dine again this time with my husband joining me I thought what are the chances of bad weather happening 2 years in a row?!?

Well this is the weather alert at the expo on race day...

Anyway before I jump into the actual race, a little bit about the training. My husband is new to running and had just ran his first 10k back in February. We knew that we were going to run separately. I wanted to try to get a PR and a good coral placement for my next half and possible full. I trained all through the hot, humid Florida summer and felt pretty good. My goal was to finish in 2 hours and 45 minutes. Not the best time but a lot better than my first half at 3 hours and 16 minutes.

We drove up on race morning and headed to the expo. One plus to arriving at the expo 2 days after it starts is there is no line to pick up your race packet. But then of course there is absolutely no good run disney merchandise left. And they even ran our of gear check bags?! Still not quite sure how that happened, I mean don't they know how many people registered?

After walking around the expo we headed to our hotel. We decided to stay at Port Orleans Riverside. On November 8th, 2007 Chad proposed to me at this resort. With race weekend occurring on our engagement anniversary date we couldn't help but stay here again!

These are the benches that he proposed to me at :)

After heading back to our room and failing at attempting to nap it was time to get ready. 

While in line to board the bus at Epcot we were seeing flashes of lightening, but at this point it just looked like heat lightening. The lightening continued along with some pretty strong wind gusts while waiting around at the corals. I was definitely getting nervous and then when we checked our phones weather aps there was definitely a lot of red in the area. Around 9pm everyone started moving in the direction of the corals, we weren't really sure what was going on since it seemed early to start lining up. But then they rerouted everyone inside the World Wide Sports complex. Here is where we heard that the race was being delayed due to severe storm warnings in the area. So we sat around in the stadiums and then walked around a bit waiting for news and just hoping they wouldn't cancel. The start time was supposed to be 10pm. A little after 10pm they announced that the warning was lifted and we could head back to the corals. My husbands cousin works for Disney and was actually at the command center and texted him telling him that they were shortening the course, cutting out Animal Kingdom. Shortly after that rundisney was posting updates on their facebook and twitter pages that the course was being shortened. Now instead of running 13.1 miles we would only be running 6.72 miles. Now I want to say that I totally understand why Disney had to do this. With severe weather in the area they had to do what was safest for the 13000+ people. And I understand they can only have the roads closed for a certain amount of time so with the delay they really had no choice but to shorten the course. But with that said yes of course I was soooo disappointed! Here I had trained for months and was hoping to PR since I would be running this alone. I felt even worse for Chad! At least this wasn't my first half, this was his first. And I couldn't imagine the disappointed for people who had traveled from all over just to run this. We only had to drive an hour. They still gave everyone medals but I have to admit when I look at I immediately feel sad, but I try to tell myself that I trained hard for this race and ran just a half mile shy of 13.1 in my training for this race so I did earn it. In the end this would have been a tough race to complete. On top of everything else it was a very hot and humid night, unseasonably warm even for Florida! 

Luckily I had already registered for Princess Weekend in February. Chrissy and I will be participating in the Glass Slipper Challenge (10k plus Half). So hopefully we won't have any inclement weather this time, I don't know maybe a blizzard?! I am also signing up to run the Best Dame Race Orlando half 2 weeks after Princess. This will give me a chance to run a half by myself and concentrate on my PR. And then I need to decide if I am going to go for the full or another half in January of 2017?!