Guest Blogger, Rebecca: One Month Until the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend!

Hi Friends!

The Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend is right around the corner! To those who have trained all spring and summer for your big race/s, I’m thinking of you and look forward to following along! I’ve asked my lifelong friend and runDisney sister, Rebecca, to be my guest blogger for today. She and her husband, Jake, will be running the Disneyland 10K! Here to tell her story is Rebecca:

Hello, fellow Will Run For Disney readers,

My name is Rebecca, I’m a runDisney runner and Gina’s friend since high school. I’ll be running in my first Disneyland race, the Disneyland 10K, this Labor Day weekend, and I’m so excited that Gina has asked me to recap this event! First, a little about me and how I became a runner…

Gina and I met back in 2003 during our high school’s infamous “double sessions” field hockey tryouts. In the relentless August heat, we would meet for two 3-hour blocks of running, stick work, running, scrimmaging, and more running. I’ll never forget eating an entire medium pizza by myself when my mom picked me up on Day 1!

Every tryout session and practice during the season started with a 3 mile run — we used to joke that we ran more than the cross-country team — and ended with “suicide sprints.” Although I’d been active my entire life and was in great shape, I absolutely hated the running parts of practice. This is most likely because, as Gina mentioned in part of her introduction, running was used as punishment by our coaches. Losing a game meant endless laps around the field at the next practice. That psychological connection stayed with me ever since, and I avoided running like the plague after high school.

I was so excited for Gina when she completed her first Princess Half Marathon in Disney World, but also surprised that someone who I thought hated running as much as I did would even consider doing something so challenging. She told me that training for the event allowed her to overcome the field hockey demons of yore, and she encouraged me to give running another chance. To make sure I’d really commit, I decided to sign up for the 2016 Wine and Dine Half Marathon weekend, with Gina running the half and my husband Jake and I running the 5K.

Using the Couch to 5K program, I trained for about 10 months to get from 0 miles to 3.1. To my surprise, I kept to the training schedule and found myself falling in love with running (there’s no better motivation than a trip to Disney World!). Once I finised Mickey’s Holiday 5K in a glowing, pre-dawn Animal Kingdom and got my gorgeous medal, I knew I wanted to do this again as soon as possible.

Jake and me at Mickey’s Holiday 5K, November 2016

Jake and I are looking forward to moving to southern California one day, so we agreed that signing up for a Disneyland race would be a perfect excuse to travel out there for a few days. Now that we’ve been running together for over a year, we decided to up our game to the 10K, and I’m so glad we did! The 10K Disneyland course is said to be the best runDisney course there is, with flat ground, 4 full miles of park time, and unique experiences like running past the World of Color fountains, seeing Cars Land lit up, and of course, running through Sleeping Beauty’s castle! Also, this race is Monsters Inc./University-themed, which are two of my favorite Pixar movies. Jake and I will be dressing up as a Roar Omega Roar frat brother and Monsters University cheerleader.

 

A sneak peek of our 2017 Disneyland 10K costumes!

In my next post, I’ll be covering the things you can’t miss if you’re going to Disneyland for this race weekend. With so much excitement in the California parks lately, there is plenty to see, eat, and experience! Until then, I’ll keep practicing my scary feet…

Rebecca

 

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