Disney’s Royal Family 5k

The race story must begin at 3:45 when the alarm went off. For some reason Disney requires us racers to get up several hours before the race to go stand around and freeze till the race start. And yes people it was freezing. I have been getting use to the cold weather living out in Kansas and normally I would not call 40 degrees freezing anymore, but when you are just standing around for a few hours in it, it is COLD.

My sister, brother in-law, and husband all joined me for the 5k so I did not have to freeze alone. We were on the first buss to the race from our hotel and were very excited to see when we got to the start that they were selling coffee, Disney thinks of everything. We all got a cup of Joe, well not my husband he hates coffee (I know he is not normal) he got hot coco, and then waited for the race. Disney had a great DJ at the race who kept us all moving and grooving to some awesome tunes while we waited. My sister and I had a great time singing and dancing while our husbands tried to act like they were not really with us.

As the race time got closer we all split up, my sister and I were going slower than the guys so we headed to the back while they headed up to the front. When they counted down the start and fireworks went off we were so very excited. Of course like any other race we started at a slow shuffle then a walk then a little bit faster walk and so on. Once we finally got to run we started to warm up and really enjoy the fact that we were at Disney.

For the first mile we ran through the parking lot at Epcot, and then we headed in to go around the world. I have to say when we finally ran into Epcot I was so excited and giddy, I mean come on running in a Disney park who gets to do this (besides the other thousand people doing it with me)? The very first character we saw was Mulan, we stopped to get a picture and this started the trend for the rest of the race. My sister had a time goal for the race and we quickly figured out that we were not going to make it. With the very slow start then all the characters we HAD to get pictures with it just was not going to happen. Luckily we both agreed that this race was more about fun than time so we just decided to have a good time and forget all about a PR.

As we were running around the countries at Epcot there were characters all over to stop and get pictures with. We stopped at most of them and when we were not stopped at all the photo opts we were singing and dancing while running of course. There were also a ton of volunteers along the course just cheering us all on. When we finally were approaching the end of the race I was very disappointed. I wanted to keep going it was so much fun and I felt great why could I not just run around Epcot all day? We ran through the finish and got our finishers medal then headed back to our hotel. After all my daughter still had her race to do in a couple hours and we had to get ready for that.