Disneyland Half Marathon 2012 – Part 1

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Labor Day weekend – that means it’s once again time for the Disneyland Half Marathon! We will be running it Sunday morning with 16,998 of our closest friends (and a number of Team AllEars teammates, as well).

This will be the 7th Disneyland Half Marathon, and our 5th time running it. We really enjoy it. They have tweaked the parks part of the course again this year because Cars Land and Buena Vista Street our now open! So we’ll get to run through Cars Land tomorrow.

We’ve made a long weekend of it, and arrived on Friday night. We are using our DVC points to stay at the Villas at the Grand Californian (we love this resort). We’re on the 5th floor, and this was what we saw when we arrived in our room Friday night! Grizzly Peak and a blue moon over the Tower of Terror. We can also see the Cadillac Range in Cars Land through the trees. It’s a great location.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

We dropped our bags and headed right to dinner at Ralph Brennan’s Jazz Kitchen. It was a very nice dinner – we shared the Double Chocolate Bread Pudding Souffle for dessert. Yummy.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

And as we walked out of the restaurant we were just in time to see the Magical fireworks show over Disneyland. I think the plaza between Tortilla Jo’s and House of Blues in Downtown Disney is a really good spot – you get a clear view of the higher fireworks.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

This was our view this morning at about 6:30.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

We wandered down to Disneyland and watched the 5K runners as they came out of Disneyland and headed over to DCA. One of the monorails was parked overhead.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

We had breakfast at La Brea Bakery Express – the first time we’d eaten there since it was remodeled. They have a much bigger menu now, and the food is good, but the line moves very sloooowly. They need to figure out how to streamline that.

They still had early entry at Disneyland once they cleared the park of runners, and we got in on the last 30 minutes of that. We took a ride on the “new” Matterhorn – it has new cars, but the track is the same and it’s still as rough as ever. We got a kick out of the “Abominable Mickey” Vinylmation in the window. 🙂

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

We did a few other rides and went over to DCA. The line for Radiator Springs Racers was long, and we needed to head over to the Health and Fitness Expo to pick up our race packets, so we left – but on the way out one of the Instant Concerts was starting so we stopped to watch that. Those fountains go REALLY high.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

Over at Packet Pickup in the Disneyland Hotel we picked up our bib numbers. It seemed strange NOT to be getting a coast-to-coast wristband, but we already did that in January when we did the Tinker Bell Half (and you can only get one per year).

The 5K had a Cars theme this year (it finished in Cars Land) and they had a nice photo backdrop for that in the pick-up area.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

The Expo was upstairs in the Convention Center. They seemed to have a larger selection of race merchandise, or at least a larger variety of t-shirts this year – but even though it was only the morning of the second day they were already sold out of size small in several of the designs – including the one I wanted, of course. They did at least have quite a few of the coast-to-coast shirts (even in small!), which have often sold out on the first day, but we got those back in January.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

They had a display that I don’t remember seeing before – a large map of the race course with information on what characters will be on the course and where. So tomorrow in DCA we can expect to see the Green Army Men, Lightning McQueen, DJ, Red the Fire Truck, and Phineas and Ferb. And in Disneyland, characters from Princess and the Frog; Captain Hook and Mr. Smee; Aladdin, Jasmine and Genie; Sleeping Beauty and Prince Philip; Darth Vader and Storm Troopers; Cinderella, Snow White, and Ariel; Merida; and Daisy Duck and Clarice Chipmunk.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

At the Run Disney booth there were examples of all of the Run Disney medals, including the new Donald and Mickey medals for 2013! The Mickey medal looks a lot better than it does in photographs.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

There’s a number of members of Team All Ears that are here for the 1/2 Marathon, and a group of us met on the patio outside Trader Sam’s in the afternoon. It was good to see some old friends and meet some new!

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

After that several of us went into Trader Sam’s for a late lunch. We were lucky to find a table open with just enough chairs. In between ship wrecks and volcano eruptions (when people order certain drinks Things Happen) Lee and I enjoyed the chicken lettuce wraps and fish tacos.

Disneyland Half Marathon 2012

We’re planning an early night, though of course we never sleep very well. The race starts at 5:45. But one thing we LOVE about the Disneyland races is that we can WALK to the start line, so there’s no need to catch a bus at an insanely early hour. So we can sleep in until 4:00 or so. 🙂

It’s going to be a warm race (by southern California standards) so we will be taking it easy and not pushing the pace. And besides, it’s Disney, and we love to stop for photos along the way!

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Laura Gilbreath is a native of San Diego, CA. She has been making the trek up Interstate 5 to Disneyland since she was a small child and terrified of talking tikis and hitchhiking ghosts. She and her husband Lee enjoy trips to Disneyland and Walt Disney World, as well as sailings on the Disney Cruise Line.

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2 Replies to “Disneyland Half Marathon 2012 – Part 1”

  1. My wife and I are hoping to do the half marathon one year when we aren’t super busy with school and work.

    I’m just wondering how you find the run. We aren’t avid runners, but we are running casually to get into better shape. We would do some heavier training for the event obviously. I am just curious how picky are they really about the runners? I know they say you need to be able to complete a 15 minute mile or something, but that’s not that hard. Do they really pull people of the course if they fall behind?

    Laura replies: Hi Martin. The requirement is that you maintain a 16 minute/mile pace, which would mean you’d finish in 3 hours and 30 minutes. In actuality, the clock doesn’t start until the last person crosses the start line, so depending on what corral you’re in, you might have a 10-15 minute head start on that. Because of the street closures they MUST have all runners through certain points by certain times, so there are some points where yes, they will pull people off the course if they are too slow. My understanding is that they warn people who are in that position in time for them to pick up their pace and avoid being swept. If people get to mile 12 they are back on Disney property and should be allowed to finish even if they are over the time limit.

  2. how can I get an I did it tshirt?

    Laura replies: I’m sorry, but I don’t know how you can get any of the race merchandise after the fact. You might try contacting Disneyland DelivEARS (Disneyland’s
    merchandise service) at (800) 362-4533 to see if they can find any of it.

    Congratulations on finishing the race! 🙂