Evening in the Garden

Wine, cheese, and sausage in the garden last evening .... with a curious companion!

  

A box office hit!

  

Jersey watching his favourite flick -- Birds on a Deck.

Disney Royal Family 5k

I should be doing a million other work-related things right now, but instead I'm doing my belated race recap for the Disney Royal Family 5k in Florida.... which was well over a month ago!


Ah well, better late than never.

The morning of February 23, in Orlando Florida, we got up bright and early -- 4:00am? -- in order to get to the race start early. There were something like 6000 people in my race!
 

 

Posing in the parking lot. 

(Photo by Kylie)

  

My great race support crew, who tried to get me dancing... yes even my Pops got down to the Chicken Dance.

(Photo by Kylie)

The racers were all funneled into separate corrals -- having NEVER done a running race before, I had no clue if there was a good spot to be in the corral. So I chose to stand at the back. Bad idea.

We had fireworks send us off!

(Photo by Kylie)

Since I was at the back of my corral, I was trapped behind a wall of people walking. What? Walkers in corral A? Either way, it was like a game of slow dodge ball for the first three minutes of the race.

First lesson of the day: never wave at cameras while running. A nice big smile will do, but being caught mid-wave makes it look like you're running with pinwheeling arms. Haha, I should run a whole race like that.

 

It was HOT.  Even though the race started at 6:30am, it was 19 degrees with 90% humidity. It was like running through molten lava air.

No race re-cap would be complete without a good pain face.

We wound our way through Disney/Epcot, past a few different characters along the path (Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, etc.). I didn't stop for photos with any since I was hoping to make up some of the time I'd lost during the slow start.

As I neared the finish line, I could hear my sister's voice in my head: "When you get to the home stretch, remember to raise your arms and smile, no matter how much pain you're in!"

Well, I put the hammer down in the last 1km -- a full out sprint! Or what I thought passed for a sprint.

 

Must. Remember. To. Look. Happy.

Yay! I'm finished! Why am I about to puke?

Yeah throwing up after a race has never happened before -- even when I used to race my road bike.

 

Trying to look cool as a cucumber. 

(Photo by Kylie)

Minnie Mouse was a great post-race pal. She kissed us!

This was definitely a fantastic first race for me -- I enjoyed the friendly atmosphere... much less competitive than the cycling world!