Walt Disney World Marathon - RunMarathon

Haley was already banged up from the previous day's race as well as being horribly under trained, so the plan was to use a run 10 walk 1 strategy until mile 20 where I'd go ahead and run the rest of the way in and wait for her at the finish.

The day starts out simple enough. We're following our race plan and running miles at about an 11:00/mile pace. I decide to ditch my sweatpants right before we head into Epcot so that the photographers can see my race number. Unfortunately Haley doesn't even make it another 1/4 mile before she has to pee. Luckily there was a real bathroom open in the park so we stopped. Some random guy had me stand on a bench with Epcot in the background and pose with his wife for a photo. I wonder how that turned out?

We start out again and make our way past the Christmas tree. The tunnel we ran through was all lit up with Christmas lights and looked really cool in the morning before the sun came out. We merged back together with the other starting wave as we passed mile 3 and left the park. Headed back along the highway past where we started and were on our way to the Magic Kingdom.

Somewhere along the way I missed a mile marker and didn't get my actual split for mile 3. Haley seemed a little too excited when she informed me that her watch keeps splits as well. "Well congratulations!" This became the first in a long day of giving Haley shit for just being her. At first it was for my own amusement, but as the day wore on I actually had to keep it up for Haley's sake. More on that later.

So the shit-giving game went back and forth for a while. I had done more than my share of idiotic things already that weekend and Haley seemed intent reminding me of every single one of them. That was the last straw. Somewhere past mile 5 I had to let her know the ugly truth. Jess and Haley had posed for a bunch of pictues in their new swimsuits the night before in the hotel (Sorry guys, those aren't getting posted; you should have been there!) and Haley had been very concerned over how big her butt looked in one particular photo. Naturally we all told her it was all in her mind at the time (her ass looked HUGE!). So at mile 5 the great game of "how many fat ass jokes can I tell about Haley" begins! I would try and remember some of them, but there were just to many. In fact, for the rest of the RR, just insert your own jokes about Haley's fat ass after every sentence. That'll give you an idea of the ass joke volume throughout the day.

At mile 6 we walked through an aid station, I made a fat joke and a woman jogging past us asked Haley, "Why in the world are you running with this guy?" :) By mile 7 Haley's pace was slowing down and I could tell that this was going to be a really long day for her if she was already having trouble. Half-way through mile 9 we could see the Disney Contemporary Resort (the one the monorail goes through). Well, we could see one very small corner of it; the fog was incredibly thick that day and really kept things from warming up for a good long while. We happened to be talking about Clif Shot Bloks as we passed the resort and then BAM!, we find a pack on the ground! They were opened, but still had a few in the package so we took them and ate what we wanted. Cran-Razz. Excellent.

Hit the mile 10 marker and we find a pack of lemon-lime Shot Bloks! Okay, this is just too funny now. So Haley got on the ground to imitate Andrew(Big Red)'s famous "carbo-loading for college students" picture from D.C. and I took a pic with her camera phone. Instant classic. Then she actually did eat the Shot Blok off the ground. That was a little disturbing. But it did help explain how her ass got so huge in the first place.

So we made our way through the Magic Kingdom and tried to keep an eye out for the ASI photographer Haley had met at the airport on her way here. He said he would be by the wizard's hat after the castle but we had no idea what we were really looking for and couldn't find him. Oh well.

By mile 11 our pace was way off and only getting slower. Haley was stopping at every single aid station and slathering her legs with BioFreeze. I found this especially hilarious as she tried to do this while she walked. It forced her into this kind of waddle motion that reminded me of the Donald Duck adventure from yesterday. As soon as we got out of the Magic Kingdom Haley had to pee again. There weren't any porta-potties in sight but that wasn't about to stop her. So we stopped near some trees and she wandered off into the woods. I waited on the side of the road but I think that a big half naked guy with a huge U.S. flag only drew more attention to the girl peeing the in woods. Oops.

Stopped at mile 12 so Haley could pose with a group of military guys along with my flag. I kept telling her it would be funnier if she was dry humping one of the guy's legs, but apparently we needed at least one normal picture for the day. Yeah, I don't get it either. Hit the half-way point in a little under 3 hours. Okay, not too bad of a pace. We could turn a slight positive split and still break 6 hours. If I ran ahead after mile 20 I could even break 5:30, but by mile 14 I knew that wasn't going to happen. This is where Haley really started to hurt. We stopped at mile 14 to stretch and there was no way she was running any more today and I knew it. Her gait was getting worse as we went along and every now and then you could really see the pain in her face. I couldn't leave her behind like that so it was walking for the rest of the day. Only thing I could do to make things any better was to tell more fat jokes to keep her laughing. Hey! Is that another package of Shot Bloks?!? Let's see how much food we can pick-up along the way! Yeah, I was stretching for ways to distract her, but this one seemed to work so I ran with it.

Mile 15 and 16 included more bathroom stops for Haley in the woods. This girl really isn't bashful at all. As people would go by and I was just standing there I got used to saying, "Oh, I'm fine. My friend is just peeing in the woods." It became very matter-of-factly after the 6th or 7th stop. You heard me. She really did stop to pee on the side of the road that many times, and we've still got 10 miles left! As we entered "Critter Country" we had to stop and take some goofy pictures next to the signs (especially the 'Bear Crossing' sign to send to BT's very own).

Got to the aid station along mile 17 and Haley stopped for her usual layer of BioFreeze. Only problem was that she forgot her hand was covered with the stuff as she rubbed her nose! Not a pretty sight and there wasn't much she could do about it other than wait it out. I learned my lesson for the day: never put BioFreeze in your nose! EVER! As we made our way through the Animal Kingdom park the fans would cheer and call out our names, "Go Aaron! You can do it Aaron!" Then suddenly Haley turns to me and asks, "Who is this Aaron guy that keeps following us and why does everyone know him?" I chuckled for a bit and kept walking. Then it hit me that she was actually asking a real question. "Turn your bib # around." This whole time people had been cheering my name but not her's because she had her race belt turned around and had no idea that our names were written above our numbers! I just about died laughing at this one! That was the closest I came to peeing my pants that weekend.

By mile 19 the sun had finally come out and turned it into a rather nice day. Haley spotted a rainbow colored scarf that someone had thrown along the course and she stopped to pick it up. Maybe a 1/4 mile later she looked a little sad and said, "I wish I would have picked up the matching hat." Well, she was barely able to walk as it was so she kept going forward and I ran back to pick up the hat. I was just happy to get a chance to do some actual running for the first time all day. I got alot of funny looks from people as I ran in the wrong direction and then sprinted past them again with ease.

We crossed a bridge at mile 19 and found a burst open Gu pack on the ground. Finally it was my turn to pretend to eat something off the ground. As Haley was taking the photo a race medic rode past on her bike, looked at the sight and said, "Even I can't help you." HA! I love the people at this race. We get a handful of cookies and goldfish crackers (okay, Haley got several handfuls and even asked the guy if she could take the whole bag) and we were finally down to the last 10K. Hey! Is that a thing of strawberry Shot Bloks?!? We found every single flavor on the course!

The official race cut-off was 7 hours and looking at the clock time, our last mile split (we were pushing 20:00 miles by then) and how much we had to go; I started to worry about making the official cut-off. I knew we had more time than that and even if we didn't make it they'd still give us our medals, but I just liked the idea of finishing under the official time. So after a little coaxing I was able to get Haley to walk at a slightly faster pace. I could tell she didn't have much left in her, but she did me a favor and toughed it out (THANKS!). As we approached mile 21 we ran across a guy wearing an inflatable sumo-wrestler costume. This was just too good not to get a photo of. The costume was so big that I don't even think he realized that Haley was feeling-up his left boob. Classic.

Mile 22 and we entered the Disney-MGM studios. The ground was covered with small silver pieces of foil and we were just plain confused at this one. Then we started to find Hershey kisses on the ground. Hey, more food! So naturally we stopped to pick up a handful. We had been talking for a while about doing something funny for the offical race cameras the next time we saw them but it had been a while since the last one. Luckily we saw them again at mile 23. Piggy-back ride time! We got our photo and I set Haley down and kept walking. It took me a minute to realize that she wasn't with me any more and as I turn around she's talkinng to the photographer who just took our picture. It was the guy she met at the airport!!! She was telling him about how we had looked for him after the castle but didn't see him and I tapped her on the shoulder and pointed behind her; we had just walked under a GIANT wizard's hat and didn't even realize it. It had been a long day.

By this time our feet were really starting to hurt and we were both just ready to be done. Mile 24 came and I found a whole, un-opened Snickers bar on the ground! This suddenly became what I was most looking forward to eating once we were done! I couldn't tell you why, but it helped get me through to the finish and that's all I needed. My fat ass joke game as well as the how much food/clothing can we find games had started to get old and after 6 hours I had nothing left to try and distract Haley from the pain in her legs. Now it was just a death march.

We made our way around the beach/yacht club resorts and knew we were almost home. We started to see people with Mickey finisher medals who had stayed to watch the slow-pokes come in. Stopped half-way through mile 24 to lay on some beach chairs for a second. I look nice and relaxed and Haley looks like she needs to be carried away on this chair. The finish can't come soon enough. Mile 25 brings us back into Epcot and around the lake that we've raced around 4 times now this weekend. Mile 26 comes and we decide that we'll go ahead and run the last few hundred yards as the finish comes into sight.

Final time of 6:48. By far my slowest marathon ever. But I've also never laughed so much during a race and I wouldn't trade this one for the world.

My plan was to leave Haley behind at mile 20 and really run the last 10K as hard as I could. But she was in bad shape only half-way through so I coudn't leave another runner behind like that. Just becuase I'm willing to beat-up Donald Duck during the Disney 5K doesn't mean I'm a heartless bastard.

At the finish Haley went straight for the medical tent to get ice for her knees. We found Jess and Chippy(ChipmunkHeart) along the fence and got our medals from the day before so we could have them all in our finisher photos. Got our Goofy medal and the collection was complete. Made the long walk to the car and laid out all the stuff we had picked up along the way. I can't believe we finished with that much more clothing and food than when we started!

Drove back to the hotel to shower and got the world's best foot massage from Chippy. THANKS CHIPPY! Grabbed some lunch from Friday's and a few beers from the bar downstairs before we had to head to the airport.


Haley's big ass.


Most of this course is pretty boring but the sections through the parks are fantastic. Running with a friend really made things alot more entertaining over the long haul. I'm sure I'll be back, but I'm not in any rush.