As many of you know, V and I did our first Disney Princess race when we participated in the Princess 10K in February. I have NO IDEA what I was thinking when I signed us up for it, but in my head, it was going to be great. Actually, it’s something I’ve wanted to do with her for a while, but it was very last minute. We happened to be talking about it in the carpool lane and how I should I check on the sign-up date once I got to work and to my surprise, sign-ups were THAT DAY at noon. I set my alarm for 11:55 am and at 11:59:30 am I was refreshing that link like a mad woman to make sure we got in. Fast forward to the race and some things to keep in mind:

Bring extra cash for the expo

Seriously … like, a couple hundred dollars for the things you’ll get suckered into thinking you absolutely need … I’m looking at you medal shaped chocolate … and the things you really do need … I’m looking at you strawberry flavored wine where I also go the chocolate shaped medal.

There are actually two separate buildings holding items for purchase, one being the vendor area with booths selling all types of things from items to piece together last-minute costumes to jewelry and the other building housing all the official Disney race merchandise. We got a Merida 10K pin and a pair of princess’ ears, which still managed to set me back close to $60. As Scar would say, Be Prepared!

Take a jacket for the morning of the Disney Princess race

Even though it was blazing in the evening, it was a bit nippy in the morning, especially when by “morning” I mean 3:30 am. It wasn’t noticeable while running, but before you run you spend about an hour and a half in your corral waiting to run. You’d think all the bodies in the corral would warm things up a bit, but you’d be thinking wrong. Speaking of the corrals …

You may be separated from your child in the corral

I’m not sure how V and I ended up in different corrals, but she was in D and I was in C. I didn’t send in times for us because we didn’t do any races that would have counted towards our time so that definitely wasn’t it. I casually strolled up to C and tried to explain that she was my child while still trying to mosey on into my area with her, but I was promptly stopped and told she couldn’t go with me, but I could go with her. I contemplated letting her start in her own corral, while I started in mine … because I was pretty sure she was going to zoom on through the race without me anyways and the thought of a headstart excited me  … but I took the more responsible parenting route and sadly walked back to corral D.

Don’t let anyone make you feel like you’re not going to finish … not even yourself

I did an insane amount of procrastinating when it came to training for this race. I signed up in August and probably didn’t hop on a treadmill until December. I was really trying to wait until the holidays were over … as if that should have made a difference … and even when I got on, I never did 1 mile let alone 6 point anything. It’s like my mind was telling myself I needed to start, but my body wasn’t really trying to hear that. I’m the queen of putting on workout clothes only to end up on the sofa with Ben & Jerry’s and my good intentions.

I was already in my head about not being able to finish because there seemed to be this huge lack of motivation mixed with procrastination. As time neared, I went from thinking “you’ve got time” to “are you going to be able to do this?”. Further stressing me was Nathan along with V and C’s father constantly asking if and when I’d been training. I really began to psych myself out and started thinking I was getting pulled by one of the sweeper buses to take runners back who weren’t meeting the time requirement.

The rush of adrenaline and emotions you feel as you get out there is like nothing I can describe. All doubt left my mind and all I could focus on was finishing. I adopted the fast walk/jog method, jogging as long as I possibly could, then slowing just a little to a brisk walk. I was able to easily keep up with V, who was running 3 minutes and walking regular speed for 1. I grabbed water at every station and tried to think of other things to ignore the fact I had to pee … thank you Finess.

I finished like a champ and was so overwhelmed with emotion and pride in what I had accomplished, I cried my face off as I ran over the finish line. Long story short, it’s better to be prepared, but even if you don’t prepare like you think everyone else is, like other people think you should be, or even as much as you wished you had, you got this.

For anyone else who has done the Disney Princess race, did I leave anything out? I’m planning for the Disney Princess half marathon now, or possibly the challenge, and could really use some pointers on that if anyone has any. As always, thanks for reading!