It’s the morning of the runDisney 5k that my son Zethan and I signed up for. I set my alarm to wake me up at 3:00am, but since I couldn’t sleep well, I woke up on my own at about 2:50am. I went ahead and laid in bed until the alarm went off, as if that ten minutes of laying awake was going to energize me. Zethan had set his own alarm and he got up at 3:00 also and started to get ready too. We each put our race bibs on our shirts and finished getting dressed to get to the main bus stop at 3:30am.

My oldest son, Zadrin, got up and drove us to the bus stop at the Hospitality House since the race buses were not stopping at all of the internal stops throughout the Old Key West resort. We had already decided on taking the race buses to EPCOT rather than drive just because I decided it was the easiest thing for me. I hadn’t been having issues with my knee for months but I knew it was possible that it would start hurting after the race. I knew the buses back to the resort would be a shorter walk than going to our car, which I would appreciate if my knee was hurting once we were done. So, the bus was the option I chose! From our room, it would have only been about a 20 minute walk to get the bus stop, so Zethan and I could have easily walked to the Hospitality House to catch the bus, but we decided to save the walking for the 5k.

A bus arrived within about 5 minutes of us getting to the bus stop. We ended up sitting on the bus about 10 minutes or so waiting for more people to arrive and then we were on our way. Our bus made a stop at Saratoga Springs but there were already two other buses waiting there to pick up people. One of those buses left a minute or two after we arrived but the bus in front of us did not move forward. We waited another 10 minutes or so before our bus driver got out and went to talk to some Cast Members standing next to the other bus. Finally, he got back to our bus and went ahead and left the Saratoga Springs bus stop location.

We arrived at EPCOT a few minutes after 4:00am. The last runDisney race I did was the 5k during Princess Half Marathon weekend in 2018, and at that time we were dropped off in a parking lot area. This year, I was happy to see we were dropped off at the bus stops at EPCOT and walked past the front of the park to get to the pre-race area. I love the park icons at night and Spaceship Earth is a beauty!

There were so many people in cool costumes and the pre-race area had meet and greets with Miguel from Coco and Mirabel from Encanto. I haven’t even seen either of those movies so I had no desire to stand in line for pictures with them. It was hard getting pictures or video of them because there were so many other people trying to do the same thing. But after walking around the pre-race area for a bit, we decided to go ahead and walk over to the race corrals.

The last time I did a runDisney event, they still had multiple corrals going from A to P or so. This time, there was only A, B, and C. Corrals A and B were for the elite runners and those who are faster, so they don’t have to try to run around and through people who are only walking the race (like me). And then they just had everyone else in one huge C corral. But there were still several staggered starts from the C corral since there were so many people. It took probably ten or so starts in C before we finally crossed the start line.

I must admit that this race made me think about trying to get back to where I can run again just so I can do more runDisney events. I liked walking this 5k around EPCOT. I love the World Showcase, especially when it’s dark outside so it was great walking from the Mexico pavilion all the way around and seeing everything lit up. Around the one mile marker, my back and my knee started to hurt just a little bit. I had already told Zethan that if my knee started to hurt I was going to slow down and he should go on at normal pace without me. I slowed down because I didn’t want to keep going my normal pace and end up with my knee bothering me for the rest of the trip. I learned that lesson the hard way in the past. I stopped briefly a couple of times just to look at characters or at the view along the course, and that helped my back to stop hurting while my knee still felt like it might get worse. I slowed my pace even more and my knee stopped hurting as much by mile two.

I kept up my slower pace for the rest of the race and by the time I crossed the finish line, my knee was barely hurting anymore, so I was happy that I decided to take my time. I met up with Zethan, we got our race medals, then headed to the area where we picked up the post race snack box and water. The buses back to the resort were close by so we went ahead and headed to the Old Key West bus stop. A bus arrived within a few minutes and before I even had time to get comfortable in my seat, the bus was back at Old Key West. We called Zadrin to pick us back up at the Hospitality House because after sitting for the ride back to the resort, I realized my feet were hurting a little from my shoes rubbing during the 5k. I don’t know why that happened since I wore the same shoes I trained in and they never rubbed liked that any of the times that we did the full 5k during training back home. But considering how much pain I ended up in after past races, I was happy that I wasn’t feeling worse.

I stretched some and then got changed once we were back in our room, and then I just relaxed until I finally felt like I could sleep for a little while. We planned to go play miniature golf at one of Disney World’s mini golf courses later, so I wanted to make sure I got some rest. That’s all for today’s installment! Hope to see you for next week’s post! °O°