2011 Marathon weekend trip report - COMPLETE!! 4/5 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
As of January 1, 2019, we have closed our forums. This is a decision we did not come to lightly, but it is necessary. The software our forums run on is just too out-of-date and it poses a significant security risk. The server software itself must be updated, and it cannot be without removing the forums.
So it is with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to our long-running forums. They came online in 2000 and brought together so many wonderful Disney fans. We had friendships form, careers launch, couples marry, children born ... all because of this amazing community.
Thank you to each of you who were a part of this community. You made it possible.
And a very special thank you to our Guides (moderators), past and present, who kept our forums a happy place to be. You are the glue that held everything together, and we are forever grateful to you. Thank you aliceinwdw, Caldercup, MrsM, WillCAD, Fortissimo, GingerJ, HiddenMickey, CRCrazy, Eeyoresmom, disneyknut, disneydani, Cam22, chezp, WDWfan, Luvsun, KMB733, rescuesk, OhToodles!, Colexis Mom, lfredsbo, HiddenMickey, DrDolphin, DopeyGirl, duck addict, Disneybine, PixieMichele, Sandra Bostwick, Eeyore Tattoo, DyanKJ130, Suzy Q'Disney, LilMarcieMouse, AllisonG, Belle*, Chrissi, Brant, DawnDenise, Crystalloubear, Disneymom9092, FanOfMickey, Goofy4Goofy, GoofyMom, Home4us123, iamgrumpy, ilovedisney247, Jennifer2003, Jenny Pooh, KrisLuvsDisney, Ladyt, Laughaholic88, LauraBelle Hime, Lilianna, LizardCop, Loobyoxlip, lukeandbrooksmom, marisag, michnash, MickeyMAC, OffKilter_Lynn, PamelaK, Poor_Eeyore, ripkensnana, RobDVC, SHEANA1226, Shell of the South, snoozin, Statelady01, Tara O'Hara, tigger22, Tink and Co., Tinkerbelz, WDWJAMBA, wdwlovers, Wendyismyname, whoSEZ, WildforWD, and WvuGrrrl. You made the magic.
We want to personally thank Sara Varney, who coordinated our community for many years (among so many other things she did for us), and Cheryl Pendry, our Message Board Manager who helped train our Guides, and Ginger Jabour, who helped us with the PassPorter-specific forums and Live! Guides. Thank you for your time, energy, and enthusiasm. You made it all happen.
There are other changes as well.
Why? Well, the world has changed. And change with it, we must. The lyrics to "We Go On" for IllumiNations say it best:
We go on to the joy and through the tears
We go on to discover new frontiers
Moving on with the current of the years.
We go on
Moving forward now as one
Moving on with a spirit born to run
Ever on with each rising sun.
To a new day, we go on.
It's time to move on and move forward.
PassPorter is a small business, and for many years it supported our family. But the world changed, print books took a backseat to the Internet, and for a long time now it has been unable to make ends meet. We've had to find new ways to support our family, which means new careers and less and less time available to devote to our first baby, PassPorter.
But eventually, we must move on and move forward. It is the right thing to do.
So we are retiring this newsletter, as we simply cannot keep up with it. Many thanks to Mouse Fan Travel who supported it all these years, to All Ears and MousePlanet who helped us with news, to our many article contributors, and -- most importantly -- to Sara Varney who edited our newsletter so wonderfully for years and years.
And we are no longer charging for the Live Guides. If you have a subscription, it's yours to keep for the lifetime of the Live Guides at no additional cost. The Live Guides will stay online, barring server issues and technical problems, for all of 2019.
That said, PassPorter is not going away. Most of the resources will remain online for as long as we can support them, and after that we will find ways to make whatever we can available. PassPorter means a great deal to us, and to many of you, and we will do our best to keep it alive in whatever way we can. Our server costs are high, and they'll need to come out of our pockets, so in the future you can expect some changes so we can bring those costs down.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for your amazing support over the years. Without you, there's no way us little guys could have made something like this happen and given the "big guys" a run for their money. PassPorter was consistently the #3 guidebook after the Unofficial and Official guides, which was really unheard of for such a small company to do. We ROCKED it thanks to you and your support and love!
If you miss us, you can still find some of us online. Sara started a new blog at DisneyParkPrincess.com -- I strongly urge you to visit and get on her mailing list. She IS the Disney park princess and knows Disney backward and forward. And I am blogging as well at JenniferMaker.com, which is a little craft blog I started a couple of years ago to make ends meet. You can see and hear me in my craft show at https://www.youtube.com/c/jennifermaker . Many PassPorter readers and fans are on Facebook, in groups they formed like the PassPorter Trip Reports and PassPorter Crafting Challenge (if you join, just let them know you read about it in the newsletter). And some of our most devoted community members started a forum of their own at Pixie Dust Lane and all are invited over.
So we encourage you to stay in touch with us and your fellow community members wherever works best for you!
Welcome! We're happy you've found the PassPorter Community -- the friendliest place to plan your vacation to Walt Disney World, Disney Cruise Line, Disneyland, and the world in general! You are now viewing the PassPorter Message Board Community as a guest, which gives you limited access. As our guest, feel free to browse our messages by selecting the forum you want to visit from the list below.
To post messages and ask questions, join our FREE community today and you'll get access to tools and resources not available to guests, such as our vacation countown timers, "living" avatars, private messaging system, database searches, downloads, and a special PassPorter discount code. Registration is fast, simple, and completely free. Just click the Join Our Community link.
If you think you've already joined, log in below now. If you don't remember your member name or password, please visit our Member Name and Password Recovery page. You are also welcome to contact us.
Running through all four parks, a Mickey medal and a 26.2 sticker for my car. These were the things that motivated me to sign up for the WDW 2011 full marathon. Here's a little running history:
In January 2009, Lou Mongello did several segments about marathon weekend on the WDW Radio show. As I listened to him talk about training for and eventually participating in the half-marathon at his favorite place in the world, I started thinking that it sounded pretty cool.At the same time, I read some marathon trip reports and started getting inspired!
Running had never sounded as interesting to me as it did right then. Now, I’m no athlete. I played soccer in elementary school and basketball in junior high, and I stunk at both! The only time I was serious about exercise was while I was pregnant with my youngest daughter: I swam twice a week for the entire pregnancy and was in the best shape of my whole life during that time. Sadly, after my daughter was born, it was way too easy for me to quit exercising. It would be years before I would exercise consistently again.
But here I was, the year that I would turn 40 years old, considering running, and 13.1 miles at that! My dad is a runner, and I knew that he and my mom would be in Florida in January, so I mentioned the race to him. Three days later, he told me that he had signed up for the 2010 Disney World half-marathon! I was sure that I wouldn’t be ready until 2011, but Dad told me that signing up for a race is a great motivator. He encouraged me to sign up for the 2010, so I did, and he was right!
I knew I had to start somewhere, so I started doing research on the internet. I found a program called Couch to 5K, which gets you from a couch potato to running 3.1 miles in 9 weeks. I started training and participated in my first event in April: a walk for the March of Dimes. By this time, my husband was inspired to start running, and we started training together. We did two 5K events before moving on to a 10K. Our first half-marathon was to be in Detroit in October. I was terrified before this race, because I knew I wasn’t properly prepared. I hadn’t done much more than the 6.2 miles required to complete the 10K two weeks before the half. The Detroit race was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done! My legs hurt so badly by mile 9 that we had to walk the rest of the way, but I finished the race and got a medal to prove it!
Next up was the one that started it all: the Disney World half marathon! I felt much more prepared for this race, both because I had increased my mileage to about 10 miles in the months since the Detroit half, and because I knew I could do it since I’d already done one! The 2010 race weekend was different than any other: it was the coldest Disney World race ever! The 5 a.m. start was met with near-freezing temperatures in addition to sleet and snow! (Fortunately for me, I’d been training outside so I was used to the elements.) However, it was Disney World, so the atmosphere more than made up for the weather! What other race offers you the chance to get your picture taken with Captain Jack Sparrow, Mary Poppins and Mickey Mouse? Where else can you run down Main Street USA toward Cinderella Castle? Where else can you run backstage at the most magical place on earth? It was my favorite race to date, despite the cold. We enjoyed it so much that we signed up for the 2011 full marathon!
So, we started training in early September after we got back from our family trip to WDW. Life got in the way, as it always does, and neither of us ended up doing the mileage we should have done. I do the 4/1 run-walk Galloway method, which really works for me because I know I have a little break coming every four minutes. I'd never be able to get very far without that.
I'm mostly going to concentrate on the race for this report, so I can get it done more quickly. The basics of the rest of the trip are that we stayed at POFQ for the first time, didn't bring the kids, had park-hoppers but tried to take it easier than we usually do, knowing what was coming up. We had a few must-do attractions, but mostly were there to enjoy the atmosphere of race weekend. We did take the Segway tour on Saturday morning, which was one of the highlights of the weekend for me. I can share about that if anyone is interested. We ate at the Tune-in Lounge at 50s Prime Time Cafe on our first night, Kona for breakfast and Boma for dinner on day 2, Le Cellier on day 3 and Ohana for breakfast on our last day.
Now, on with race day pictures!
We paid for the race retreat in case the weather was the same as last year. It was worth it to us. Private toilets, private bag check, food before and after the race. I'd do it again.
We met our WDW Radio Running team friends at the family reunion tents for a little pre-race pep talk:
We were in Corral G, which bummed us out, because we thought the time we submitted (2:42 for our best half time ever) would be enough to move us forward. We could have really used a bigger cushion than that, but what can you do?
Crossing the start line!
The race started at 5:35, and we crossed the start about 6:00. It was so dark out!
There were a few of these guys from the Main Street Electrical Parade. They were even playing the music, which made me happy, since the music for MSEP is my ringtone!
Max and Darkwing Duck! No time to stop for characters this early, but I knew these guys were pretty rare, so I snapped a pic as I went by.
It started to get light out as we left Epcot for the Magic Kingdom. I was particularly looking forward to MK because we had WDW Radio Running Team friends who would be waiting for us on Main Street USA! We didn't have that last year, so it really kept us moving and motivated.
This was a cool inflatable, but the placement was kind of interesting. It was on the road to MK, so we were actually running away from the real Spaceship Earth, but here was another Spaceship Earth ahead of us. We had a long way to go before we would be seeing SE again!
There were so many marching bands along the route, and they really pumped us up as we went by.
One of my favorite moments of last year's race was running through these gates. I was disappointed that we only got to run by them this year, not through them!
These guys were riding around the TTC parking lot. Not sure where they are from; I've never seen them at WDW before!
Tronorail!
Drumline!
Sorry for the quality of the picture. I loved this sentiment, and the guy up there was dancing away and having a good old time!
Contemporary
Space Mountain
Monorail silver
Up next, the Magic Kingdom! We enter through a backstage area that's in the right-hand corner of Town Square if you have your back to the train station. Here's our first glimpse into Town Square:
We saw our friends on Main Street and got a hug and lots of cheers. It was so awesome! We'd hoped to see them later but this was the only time we were able to catch them since we ended up being so slow.
We had our picture taken with so many characters along the way! Should we have taken all that time to stop for these photos? Probably not. Did it add to the fun of the race? Absolutely! The first 18 miles or so were a lot of fun!
Mad Hatter
I was thrilled to see Flynn and Rapunzel! I loved this movie, and my girls really wanted us to get our pictures with them. We took one look at the regular line at MK and decided against it, so I was so glad to have the opportunity to see them during the race. I ran up to Flynn and said "Eugene!" and he chided me, saying that he had a whole new backstory now!
Dumbo!
So funny to see the Carousel without a lot of kids swarming around it.
You heard these guys before you saw them; rounding the corner and seeing them up on the castle was so amazing!
One of the step-sisters told me I was way too perky this early in the morning. She said I must have gotten up on the right side of the bed! (Yeah, at 2:45!)
The Fairy Godmother gave us a "Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!" and told us that would get us across the finish line, but we'd have to wait a while!
The Fairy godmothers-in-training were all out cheering for us next to BBB. Wish I'd gotten a picture!
I took this one just before going down the ramp. I love this photo!
Hooray!
UP NEXT: more Magic in the Kingdom
__________________
Last edited by home4us123; 03-21-2011 at 06:42 AM..
Reason: fp609
About This Page: 
Like
Thank
Pixie Dust
Threaded Mode
