We're Back!!

Here's a quote that I saw on the RunDisney Facebook page this morning from famous running author John "The Penguin" Bingham that sums it all up for many: "The miracle isn't that I finished. The miracle is that I had the courage to start." Or in our case.. start again! It's been a very long 3 1/2months of excuses, half hearted attempts at restarting training and life getting in the way.. but we're back and if what they say is right and it takes 21 times to start at habit.. we now have five less days to attain our new habit goal!

This week was a lot about just 'doing it' aka.. re-starting the morning workouts and re-start we did. All three of us are complaining about aches and pains and lack of lungs while running.. but you know what? It feels so good to be back at it and the pains are more of a reminder that we are making a difference and if feels REALLY GOOD.

For example, today Felic and I did our first run from our new running plan courtesy of Jeff Galloway to increase our speed (well actually it was more that it only contained three running days a week and we like that!)

**Sidebar: Now if you are looking at our countdown, you'll notice that we only have just over 80days left before our next Disney Half Marathon so mathematically & judgmentally speaking, yes we are currently behind 5 weeks and starting our training in week 6 .. YIKES!! Oh well.. like I mentioned earlier.. it's about the courage to start.. right?**

Ok, back to today.. we did our first "Speedwork" day for this Half Marathon. We did six 700m repeats. We mapped it out and did all six repeats on goal time. We were pretty happy with our time, the fact that we did it AND this new method to our training. Both of us experienced a kind of runner's high after we got back to work and are looking forward to running that method again!

Back for real. No, really this time!



This morning the three princesses went for our first run together since...well...our Princess Half Marathon. We've each had the odd run here and there, but it's been a while since we were a trio! It was really great to run with the ladies again, I've missed it.

What's up, you ask?



My toes look prettier, but the idea is the same

-Princess Fliss and Princess Chris have registered for the Disneyland Half Marathon in September, which means we get Coast to Coast medals for extra blingy glory on race day!

-Princess Crys wasn't able to commit to the race before it sold out (back in March, guess we aren't the only ones who want the Coast to Coast) but has promised to keep up the race training with us

-Nobody's running pants fit quite as nicely as they did when we were running 30-40K a week.

So, we have a PLAN and we're sticking to it! Disney was kind enough to even make one for us and while we're starting a few weeks behind, I think this one will work nicely. We have the basics under our (stretched out, in my case) belts and hopefully the flexibility of this plan will help us stick to it.  We were a bit slower today that we used to be, but I think everyone felt good about the run.

As for our paths, the airport construction is in full swing but they've been kind enough to add an actual running route back in for us that's a near perfect 5K, thanks YYC!  Plus, if we run after 7am, the mosquitos are so thick out there they keep us running away from them.

What wears a tiara, has two thumbs, and sucks?

Yeah, there's a plate of poutine just out of the shot

 I gotta say, since our half marathon, I've really fallen off the running wagon. In my defence, I got kicked REALLY hard during the last 10 seconds of my last indoor soccer game this season. A few x-rays and a set of crutches later, I wasn't doing any running for a few weeks. Well, at least it hadn't happened a few weeks earlier. I used that time wisely to sit around "resting" my bruised foot and eating as much poutine as I could. I also went to New Orleans, where it turns out, it's extremely easy to scarf 5000 calories a day thanks to a strict deep fried seafood diet washed down with so very many tasty Miller Lites.

Long story short, this means I gained nearly 10lbs in April and totally forgot how to run. Last week I did my first 5K in 5 weeks and it was almost like I'd never run in my life. It took me 40 minutes, not including the time I spent lying on a bench near my house trying not to vomit, and every step was like torture.

Short story long, tomorrow I'm doing the Mother's Day 10K which I am totally unprepared for, and just might kill me, since I've also had a cold all week. But it should be a good chance to get on with training...more on that later!

PS, if you're wondering WTF are the photos from the Princess Run we've been promising since, oh, March, they ARE still coming, I just don't really understand how to use Flickr.

Princess Expo

OK, we're working on a slide show so you don't get overwhelmed by giant posts...that's why there's no pictures to go with the story below...but we're working on it, stay tuned!

Every Princess needs a show, right? Well, the day before our race, we headed over to the ESPN Sports Zone at DisneyWorld to pick up our race packs. We got there before it started, and it was already so busy we had to park on the grass and pack sandwiches for the hike into the expo.  The line looked huge, but it was mostly because they weren't letting anyone in yet.

While we waited in line, we were able to hop into Guest Services and pick up our park passes, (big time saver the next day) and chatted with the ladies around us in line. We were in a perfect spot to see the Fairy Godmother make a speech and with a burst of streamers, the expo had begun!  We could choose the "express entrance" and go straight in, or opt to wait for a photo  with the Fairy Godmother herself. Since we were all practically crying with excitement, we naturally chose to wait and say hello to the FG. She called us all her darlings and with a smile and wave of her wand, we got some pictures with her and the footmen before heading into the expo itself...

Just inside the door were greeters with magic wands to sprinkle us with Pixie Dust!  Bibbity Bobbidy Boo...may all your race day wishes come true!  With a wave of the wand, we were all showered with green glitter (good luck which would serve us all well over the next 3 days). After all getting dusted up (and the shrieks of excitement had died down), we headed down to pick up our bibs.  Since we had registered minutes apart and they were organized by bib number, we were all in the same line, yay! Bibs were colored by the princess we had chosen during signup and all labeled with our Princess names.  Pretty sweet!  We were also pretty excited to see were were in Corral D, not F (the last one) like we had assumed, so we would be leaving 15 minutes earlier than we thought.  We walked across the marker that activated our race chip and head over to pick up our swag bags.  The bags were awesome lime green drawstring mesh backpacks and the race shirts were adorable!

After we picked up our shirts, we searched for water to begin the pre-race hydration process...only to find that in addition to bottles of water and Powerade, the Expo was kind enough to have FROSTY MILLER LITE BEER FOR $3 a pint!!!!!  YES PLEASE DISNEY!?!  We drank our 1030am beers as we wandered the expo and felt as gleeful as frat boys in Vegas!  We checked out the medals, the merchandise, and entered draws and grabbed freebees like pace bracelets and fridge magnets before heading back out into the sunshine.

We spent the afternoon relaxing- tanning and hanging out at the awesome pool at our condo, resting up before the big race while drinking plenty of water.  The weather throughout the trip was unseasonably warm, so we were treated to glorious blue skies with fluffy clouds and perfect 30C temperatures.

For dinner, we headed out early to the Cheesecake Factory, confident their giant portions would carb load us up before our race.  Naturally, it did not disappoint, in fact, the servings were so huge we ended up bringing home most of what we had ordered (even though it was all delicious) and we all took our cheesecakes (2 red velvets, a chocolate mousse and a peanut butter cup, mmmmm!) to go.

We were home around 830, spent a bit of time getting ourselves all organized, and it was lights out around 9pm for the Princesses....I think we had 4 alarms set for our 3am wakeup...

WE DID IT!!!

Thank you to all our friends and family for following and supporting us through this journey. We're too busy hanging out with Mickey and Minnie right now to update the blog but here are a few photos of the race. More to come when we're back home!