I’ll just say this up front: while I had a great time overall at last year’s Avengers Half Marathon, this year was practically perfect in so many ways. Everything went so smoothly for us that I feel like runDisney is going to have a hard time topping this event for me.
Disneyland in November is perfection: lows in the 50s and highs in the 70s. And no crazy surprises like 50 mph winds this year, so things were feeling great all weekend long.
Throw in Disney Christmas decorations and a couple thousand runners dressed as their favorite Super Heroes and I’m basically in my element.
The more I watch Avengers, Agents of SHIELD, and Captain America movies, the nerdier I find myself becoming. My friend Suzanne is my go-to geek source, and she loves watching me grow and become nerdier as the weeks go on. I guess that’s why I loved this race so much: it was themed well, and it spoke to this new fan-girl side of me.
On Thursday morning, I met up with my fellow DisBroads and Avengers fans, Suzanne and Tania and we headed over to the expo.
This expo was a vast improvement over recent ones for me. Typically I’m a get in, get out kind of runner. With Disneyland steps away, it’s hard to keep my attention in one place. But we stuck around for a few hours checking out the booths and doing a little shopping.
The standard items were available at the booths (Sparkle Skirts, KT Tape, New Balance, etc.) but there were some additions by the way of entertainment that we enjoyed.
Like this video for example. I loved playing Ant-Man for a few seconds.
Y’all. I am #antman
Posted by My No-Guilt Life on Thursday, November 12, 2015
One booth offered a different green-screen picture opp every day.
Day 1 was the Hulk, Day 2 was Thor, and Day 3 was Captain America.
We only made it inside for Hulk, but I appreciated that they were trying to draw us in for multiple visits.
A hint for runDisney: if the real Captain America was to appear- I’m talking Chis Evans here- we would have made additional stops at the expo for sure. Just sayin’!
After the expo we hit up the parks and by the end of the day were totally wiped out. We walked over 13 miles that day and didn’t even get a medal for it.
But we did grab some Mickey-shaped treats at the end of the night, so it’s kinda the same thing, right?
In the early morning, we discovered our friend Julia hanging out in our room. This wasn’t a surprise as she was on the reservation, just a little crazy that we hadn’t heard her come in at 2am!
None of us were running the 5K but our friend Heather was so we decided to roll out of bed and see if we could cheer her on.
We found a spot to watch the race as runners exited Downtown Disney and headed toward the finish line.
The 5K holds a special place in my heart due to the first time runners making their big finish and all the families running together. I love cheering on these races– it’s so inspiring and just plain fun!
We saw Heather, grabbed a quick hug, and sent her to the finish line. We decided to wait for the last runners to come through the shoot and cheered the whole time.
After the race, we made our way through with one destination in mind: Starbucks…along with everyone else who was awake for the 5K apparently. But I think that’s pretty standard for a Disney race.
Julia was running on a couple hours of sleep and needed the coffee, but honestly we all benefited from a little something from SB.
See how happy we all are? Starbucks for the win!
Destination: Disneyland.
I had a plan for the day and it required some luck to pull off.
Due to the closures coming up around the Disneyland Parks, I knew this was my last chance to ride the Lilly Belle for a few years possibly. If it was going to ever happen, today was the day.
We got in line and waited for the chance to put this plan into action!
Spoiler Alert:
We got tickets. I’ll recap that adventure tomorrow.
Do you like spending time at the race expo? Do you ever cheer races as a spectator?
Patty Holliday has been running Disney since 2011. She knows just about every tip, trick, and hack there is to cover the runDisney Magical Miles at Disney World and Disneyland. She knows every mile isn’t *always* magical- but with training, tips, and a little bit of pixie dust, they can be a lot of fun! You can also find her at noguiltlife.com and noguiltfangirl.com
Jen
Thursday 19th of November 2015
Oh, you haven't even scratched the surface of comic nerdery. Unless you grew up with it decades before Disney bought the franchise and started making movies based on the properties, you can't know the conversations about the broccoli people or Thor fighting Dracula. Don't every work for SHIELD because their agents always get killed. Every Christmas dinner would involve a deep discussion on how Aunt May could have been in her eighties when my uncles were kids and still in her eighties when my brother was reading the comics twenty years later....ugh. You'd have thought those characters were people in my family. It goes back...so far back pre Disney....
patty
Thursday 19th of November 2015
Ha! I know. I live wth that brand of nerd. He goes back and forth on my new interests: at times he's a patient teacher and at times he's mocking me for being such a newbie poser. Good times over here! ? I figure everyone starts somewhere and at least Disney opened the door to a new generation of fans ensuring the nerdiness goes on for many years!