Running in Glass Slippers: My Review of the 2016 Princess 5K

The working title of this post: Lots of complaining (Sticking with my strengths)

I hate exercise. Hate it. Well, yoga’s not SO bad. But running? Ugh. If you see me running, you’d better start running, because there’s a good chance I’m being chased by a bear/mugger/alien.

Anyway, the good people at RunDisney have my number. They know that as much as I HATE running, I’ll run at Walt Disney World. Heck, I’ll even plan an entire vacation around it.

This brings us to my brief, first-hand, complain-laden but overall not-so-horrible experience from the 2016 Princess Half Marathon Weekend Princess 5K. Did you get all that? There’s a quiz at the end.

Pre-Requisites

For a slowpoke like me, there’s no doubt that the slow corral was the one for me. I also happened to notice that this year, MOST of the runners were in this corral and there was little (or no) oversight as to where runners lined up. This isn’t that big of a deal for me. If you’re Meb or Jeff Galloway, however, you’ll end up qualifying for the A corral anyway.

I’m still NOT a fan of having to take a bus from the resort to Wide World of Sports (WWOS) to pick up your race bib and shirt. But we got smart about it this year and hubby and I visited separately to avoid lugging around the stroller and the toddler. Of course this also meant that I had enough personal freedom to go shopping for car magnets and RunDisney Mickey plush.

Waking up at zero-dark-thirty to take a bus to the starting line is ALSO not my favorite thing to do for these races. But, with our previous experience, we knew that we could wait a long time, take what was basically the last bus, and still have time to use the bathroom before heading to our corral.

Race Course

Spending about half of the course in the Epcot parking lot is about as inspiring as watching paint dry. Even more disheartening is seeing the early corral runners already done, lined up and ready for the bus back to their resort. Pfft.

The lines to meet the characters are always too long for their own good – despite my best intentions to pose with them all, we didn’t meet a single one. Not even before the race. Lines were just too long! There has to be something RunDisney can do about this. More greetings? Less people running?

Not much else to say except that it wasn’t anything new, but it still makes you feel like hot stuff to run through Epcot as the sun is coming up and you (and 5,000 of your closest friends) have the park to yourselves.

Kudos

A big shout out to my hubby who plodded along with my fat butt on a painfully slow slog through the course. Frankly, I can’t believe I actually made it because the only training I did was 4-5 yoga classes a week for six weeks. No running. Only cardio is carrying

around the 34 pound toddler. That counts, right?

A tip of my sweaty baseball cap to the hundreds of race volunteers and Cast Members manning the registration/race bib/shirt booths at WWOS, those cheering us on, handing out water, snack boxes and the like along the race course and at the finish. Your enthusiasm goes a long way!

The weather gods. Unlike the Family 5K last January when the weather was not fit for man nor beast, this year’s forecast was gorgeous. Cool enough for a sweatshirt at the start, but warm enough to lose it about half way through the race. And thank goodness for that.

Post-Script

The 5K was Friday morning. Hubby ran the 10K the next morning, Saturday. That same morning, post 10K, sitting near Ohana at the Polynesian and waiting for our table at Kona Café, I see a Facebook ad for the April 15th Star Wars 5K. Of course we signed up, people. More to come on that next month…