The Tinkerbell Half Marathon

3am- that's when I woke up! I shaved my face (so as to look more the youthful "Peter Pan" part) dressed up in costume and headed to Disneyland! Fortunately, I found a good parking spot about 3 blocks away. It was so early! I saw other racers walking or jogging so I just started following the crowds of people. Before I knew it, I was in the "C" group of thousands of people. There were five groups; A-E. Only women were allowed in the A and B groups. I was surprised to see there were quite a few Peter Pan's in the crowd and even a Captain Hook here and there. Of course there were thousands of women in Tinkerbell wings.

The race began at 5am, but they only let each group go one at a time and it took about five minutes for a group to go. By the time I got started, they'd been letting runners start for about 20 minutes! I've never been surrounded by so many runners- just crazy! There were huge screens overhead and a large celebratory send off with several characters.

The first mile was a bit uncomfortable; as often happens in larger races. It was shoulder to wing to hook to feathered had for quite a while! Our first stop was in California Adventure - Cars land!

My favorite picture of the whole trip is this one with Jeff & Maureen, Trisha & Jeff and me. We'd caught up with Maureen and Jeff at the first pit stop- I saw her standing to the side so we all joined up together to race- very lucky!

On our way out of California Adventure the whole "World of Colors" display was going and it was amazing. I couldn't help but stop yet again on the route and take a picture.

At some point, I was able to just accept the fact that this "race" was more of a theme park ride than a race and I just stopped as needed and took pictures and enjoyed the sights to be seen. Another great picture is when I came across the group of Lost Boys- and I was Peter Pan; perfect!

As we jogged through the Magic Kingdom there were lots of various cast members to snap a picture with. Of course I had to get this one of Tinkerbell who was cheering all the runners along and watching over us as we passed. Captain hook was also down below, getting pictures with the runners.

Once the first six miles of craziness running through the parks was through I was able to focus in on my running and made up for a lot of the lag. The last few miles came in at around 7 minute miles. You can checkout my run on Runkeeper here. I had a lot of fun running with my friends, jogging through the park and enjoying Disneyland this weekend. It's certainly not the typical half marathon; it's more like a runners theme park ride!