This weekend was the culmination of almost a year of planning. A weekend packed full for sure. As an Asheville Marathon Ambassador, there was much more to this event than just training with my feet, but helping prep for this event and playing a teeny tiny role in helping it go smoothly. Daphne, who runs the IDaphe events, has an amazing setup and assistants... this experience has shown me how much planning it takes to make an event like this go off so well.

As most half marathoners did, I came in on Friday for the expo to get my race packet. Half marathoners, full marathoners, and those completing the Vineyard Challenge were immediately greeted as they entered the Double Tree hotel, either by the info booth(that was me for some few hours), or the race waiver station.

Runners picked up their packets, got their Expo bingo cards, goody bags, and flowed through the expo. Goody bags included a weekend schedule, gloves, a race buff, and some other goodies. The expo is the place to get to try free Roots hummus, buy those awesome Balega socks with all the sponsors on them from Fleet Feet at 2 for $10, try your muscle cream, visit Specialized PT, buy Biltmore Wine with custom race labels, Bani Bands, visit WCU booth, discounted shoes and clothes with Vertical Running of Black Mountain, and much more. Get your bingo card stamped at each vendor and submit to win a prize. Shirts and more are available at the Expo as well as listening to Danny Dreyer talk on Chi running.

My Ambassador job on Friday included volunteering to get expo set up (thanks to Ingles for fueling our breakfast) and then info booth until I left for work. Ingles and Chic-fil-a were awesome to deliver lunch!

Race morning, the race starts at 730 a.m. We were up at 5:15AM to get to Biltmore around 6am. It can take up to 30 minutes to get from the gate to parking depending on arriving traffic. After parking, we hit the port a potty, then headed to get photos with the Asheville Marathon Ambassadors by the barn.
Smile! Then back off we all went to get race prepped.

One more trip to the potty, bag check, we were in our spots 5 minutes before race start. The sun is already coming up, temps are in the upper 50's... Conrad and I place ourselves by the 2 hour pacer guy. Conrad wants to stay close to help him PR today. I know I can't keep his pace. I know going into the race I'll race my own pace. I would love to PR (last year I did PR at 2:09:33), but I know I'm not as fast this year.

And the race starts. Such a gorgeous course. The first mile starts out relatively flat. As you turn left to go up past the sheep pasture on your right, mile 2 starts. And this mile is a steady climb to the Deer Park Restaurant. As we pass it, and go around a corner, Mile 3 starts and we have a little over a mile of downhill! As you reach the main ticket booth, you take a right and spend from 3.3m-4.8m of a steady uphill climb. Just focus on the beauty. Its not so bad. As you crest, you hit water station 2, that has fuel (Honey Stinger gel this year) and you start the rolling hills of up and down for the next mile. As your are reaching mile 6, you reach the Biltmore House in all its glory!

Many people find a place here to take a quick photo stop. Some at the back of the lawn, some by the house.
I stopped for a quick photo here, but as I got back on the path, BAM, the 2:15 hour pacer girl was right beside me, so I bolted ahead. There wasn't gonna be any of that today! But she sure was motivating. She just kept yelling positive thoughts to the ones who stayed with her! You go Kay!
As you run to the house and back up the drive, Smile at Paul Jackson Photographers as they catch you in your happy place! The next 2 miles are practically downhill people! You run past the Biltmore Estate Gardens.

They are just starting to plant and get ready for the Spring Plants. You'll pass Bass Pond, and the waterfall, cross the bridge and as you reach the bottom of the hill, you'll turn left.

Another fueling station is waiting on you. This time, some fruit is there as well. You'll do a short out and back. A bridge washed out earlier in the year with a flood, so we can't use the same path they've used the last 3 years, so we re-pass the fuel station and head on down the road towards Antler hill until you reach the lagoon on the left. Now, remember, by this point, the trail is completely flat. You hit some dirt as you run past the lagoon, French broad on your left. You're placed back onto the concrete path to continue on until you hit the gravel again.

We are still running with the River on our left, fields on our right. Some awesome water stations are there about every mile at this point- dancing, cheering you on. You're in mile 10 and 11 by now and need all the motivation I can get!
The lady of the Bridge is there this year to smile as we pass the bridge that heads to the West side. This is where the troll has has been years past, but this is the new addition to the story.

The sun has come up and it is definitely in the mid-60's by now, and I'm worn out. Maybe starting to get somewhat dehydrated. I can't decide if I just didn't eat enough last night too. I personally think a few times I'm hallucinating and maybe I'd like to pass out. I hear Kay, my 2:15 pacer I'm trying to avoid get closer and closer. I don't have the energy to fight it to stay ahead anymore, and I let her pass me....and the entire crew who stuck with her. Proud of them. And yes, she's still cheering them on as if she is just walking today. Man, can I vote her for Pacer of the weekend??? And I just wanted to avoid her...lol.
You keep going straight on the gravelly dirt past the awesome high-energy Young Life group at the Y (this is a location that you run straight, but also when you come back its only .5m to the finish! People are crossing paths here).
What they don't realize is that I would rather be running hills on asphalt than running this Gravely dirt on flat ground and I need all the motivation I can get by this point. Yay to Jordan D, Leslie S, and Amy B for cheering me on!
About 3/4 miles down you'll do a turn-around and cross a timing mat. Head back to the Young Life Water Station and now veer left to the last .5m. This is a slight uphill finish here. Legs are tired now. Just want to be done. As you get to the last .1 mile, my husband is standing on the corner (he's been back about 14 minutes at this point) taking a video and picture of me coming through. The actual finish line is at the bottom of the hill after I turn right onto the asphalt.

The finish includes amazing volunteers putting that gorgeous medal around my neck. I knew in advance I wanted to go home with a white finishers blanket... so I walked right up to the volunteer who had a white and beige one, and requested the white. With a big smile he handed it to me. Another volunteer hands me my water, lid off and ready to drink.

Conrad met me at the finish, and we walked over for our finishers photos, then headed up to the food tent. Here you get to sign up for free massages (25 minute wait, but that's fine). Eat my food and chat with Mindy and Brian as we wait, and eat.

Roots is giving out free tubs of hummus and chips to runners. Michelob is giving out free beer to runners. Ingles food tent has bananas, orange slices, bagel halves, granola bars, Dove Chocolate, water, PowerAde... Its a nice atmosphere at the old barn/stables.

The fun ended as we had to leave to spend the day with the kids at their events for the day though. So nice to watch Ian's first outdoor spring soccer game! Back to the Expo real quick to buy my Balega socks and 2 bottles of the labeled wine to display. I figure since I worked my way as an ambassador for a free entry, that I could spend a little extra on the fun stuff.

Don't forget to take advantage of the best deal on a Biltmore house season pass! Those tickets we had to use to get onto the estate the morning of the race can be upgraded to Season passes at $74 after taxes for the Biltmore House/Estate. I haven't seen them at a better price at all throughout the entire year. So we took care of that as well. One way to use these passes:

But let me tell you, Saturday night, bubble bath was amazing to calm the muscles and relax and stretch. I slept great!

Sunday morning, Conrad and I got up early, he went in at 5:30am to help with the start line, and I came a little later to help him, then get awards going as the Awards Ambassador. It was a rainy morning today, but not too cold.

We got awards set up, and were able to help give them out, and then clean up took us until around 2:30/3pm, then we helped more around to clean up.

It was so cool to see the special people who obtained awards. The Backyard Vineyard Challenger jackets and medals were beautiful.
Conrad and I chatted with the awesome local 2nd place overall male who just randomly picked up a transfer into the race from a friend a week before the race, unexpectedly offered to him. Then beasts out 2nd place!
The woman who came up to me at the end of the race, worn out and completely shocked that she was notified she has won an award. She told me that she had only started running these distances recently and somehow kept getting age-place awards. She was so sweet and I took her picture with her prize and on the podium for her. I was so happy to see her so happy!

Nonetheless, the weekend was grande. Busy. And I would do it all again. Daphne, Mindy, Amy are all amazing! Brian, Micah, Taylor, Tim and the rest are as well! The ambassadors do a great job of jumping in and helping where they all can.

Well run race! Like my blog so if I get to be an ambassador again, I can help sign you up with my special ambassador deals and codes :)

Well, we made it. 19.3 miles of fun running through the parks at Disney. After all the training we did, our legs and joints actually held out pretty well!

We arrived at Disney Thursday night. We drove down, so along the way I watched on Facebook how much drama was occurring at the Expo. Sadly, it appears that Disney puts out a certain amount of merchandise that would be loved by the runners, such as tumblers that say Glass Slipper challenge, jackets, Disney Douney and Bourkes, etc... and personal shoppers and such were showing up and purchasing boxes of these items, essentially cleaning the place out of good stuff by 2pm on Thursday, then tripling the price to sell on Ebay. Good stuff...not.
Anyhow, the Expo was our first stop as we got to Disney. It was actually pretty crowded still at 6pm at night. I did pick up a couple items and we walked through the expo. Got a great picture with Jeff Galloway. Let me tell you, after taking pictures and talking to people all day long, by the time I came along that evening, he was still in an amazing mood, happy and talkative. Great guy!

Dinner, then hotel check in. Sleep, check.

Friday was our day at Magic Kingdom. As resort guests, we were able to partake in Extra Magic Hours and show up at 8am rather than 9am with the rest of the non-resort guests. This was great because we were able to get on the 7 dwarfs mine train immediately, since I had not gotten a fast pass for it. We spent the entire day there until everyone was tuckered out by 8:30pm, so we headed back after fireworks to our hotel.

3am wakeup call Saturday morning for the Enchanted 10k. Left the boys in bed this morning because we knew this race was not as big a deal. Hopped the resort bus to Epcot with many runners. I found my charity I ran for (Teaching and Learning Collaborative) and thanked them and got a quick picture with them as well (PiRATE princess). My training partner, Jenny, found me there around 4:15ish at Epcot. We dressed as Ursula and Ariel for the Under the Sea theme. We were lucky to be in corral A for the 10k, but almost lost our corral spot due to the long port-a-potty lines. Luckily we were able to talk a security guy into opening our gate for us so we could get in our line just in time!

The 10k was gorgeous. Knowing we start at 5:30am, most of this race is in the dark, so as we hit mile 4 and were running through the foreign countries in Epcot, it was beautiful. We continued onto the boardwalk, making a loop back to the front of Epcot, running past the Nemo Ride and around SpaceShip Earth to reach the finish line in front of Epcot. Fun fact: There were approximately 11000 runners in this race, around 10k of them were women.

After a few photo ops and goodbyes, I went back to my hotel to rest until lunch. I chose to not schedule a park day Saturday so that I didn't wear my legs out between races. We went to Disney Springs, Rainforest Café, Resort hotel pool, and rode the monorail. I found an awesome cupcake to commemorate the trip at the Contemporary by Chef Mickey's. After a pasta dinner at the resort hotel, we hit an early bedtime to prepare for yet another 3am waking.

Sunday morning, 3am waking for the half marathon, I'm dressing to be Pocahontas this day. I had come up with the clothing idea, however my husband is a master at costume design, so I had let him sew it together. He was nervous it might fall apart over the course of 13 miles (spoiler, it didn't fall apart), but we pinned it up in many places so we would be set. He woke up in time to help me make sure it was perfect before I walked out of my room at 3:35am. Quick oatmeal breakfast in the cafeteria with a bunch of sleepy eyed princesses and off to the buses. Bit more of a line today, had to wait for a bus to arrive to take us. Makes sense since 20k runners ran this race!

Met up with an old friend around 4am and exchanged hugs and quick catchup talk. Met up with Jenny around 4:15 and for fear of racing to our corral again, we got moving to get set up and all, quicker today. Excited we got to start in Corral D this year. We submitted the same time last year and were in Corral E. Expected them to move us to F just because we were running the Glass Slipper Challenge, but instead we moved up. So we were very happy.

And we're off. The first few miles usually include fans cheering, and a band, then we passed UP in the hot air balloon and the 'Heros' or princes (there were sadly only a few this year compared to last year). Running into Magic Kingdom through the ticket gate is very magical. We passed a few other characters, but the longest line was at around mile 4 when we stopped for Jasmine for a photo. We probably took a 5 minute stop here for this picture.
And for those wondering, the photos are taken by Marathonfoto, but there is a castmember beside them that will take a photo with your phone as well.
Passing the Contemporary, we slowly move into the streets of Magic kingdom, running down main street with the Castle in full frontal view. Our husbands and kids were there to wave at us as we passed. (My husband got on one of the last buses that left the resort around 4:45/5am and rode to Epcot, then the monorail to Magic Kingdom to be able to do this). We continue through Tomorrowland and around through Fantasyland to the back of the castle, then through the castle, which is one of the most exciting parts about this race. We follow out through Frontier land and out to the main road again for the long stretch out. We leave the park itself around 6.5miles. The long stretch back includes many water breaks, the golf course, Mary Poppins, The Genie, The Glass Slipper princes, and Toy Story Army men yelling at the runners as they go by. The first Clif Shot/bar/gel is at around mile 8.

To finish out the race, you run into Epcot, to the lake, turn around for a perfect shot of Spaceship Earth, and out to the finish line.

As you finish the race, Mickey, Goofy, Minnie are at the finish line. Your name is called from the loudspeaker as you come around the bend. After going through the finish line, you have pixie dust placed on your head, you get your medal, you get your RunDisney Mylar blanket, and continue around the corner for powerade and waters.
To ensure you are the bib-owner, a picture is taken with your bib on- we are then ushered into a tent for the Glass Slipper Challenge medals, then another picture is taken.
We get our food, the standard pre-packed Run-Disney food box and a banana and we are done!

Stretch, back to the hotel, shower, and back to the parks we go. Hollywood Studios! The boys are already there riding rides, I play catchup and rush around the park with them. Their favorites are Toy Story mania and the Jedi Training. (Yes, after we ran through Magic Kingdom, my husband and boys left on a bus from Magic Kingdom straight to Hollywood Studios to be there before Extra-Magic hours rope-drop so they would get signed up for this). The day ended with Fantasmic and then Star wars Fireworks.

The best thing about Fantasmic was that we signed up for the Dinner package, so lunch was at Hollywood and Vine and our seating for Fantasmic was front and center, and there was no extra cost!

Monday- finally a morning to sleep in... til 6am :). Breakfast at Akershus at 8am in Epcot meant we were first people in the park, since it doesn't open until 9am. We rode every ride we wanted to (except Soarin because it was closed until this summer :(). Got fastpasses for the fireworks after we had used every fast pass we could use up, which was a great idea btw.

Tuesday morning, up at 5:30am to get a move on home.

It was a great trip. Very busy, but fun!

Being this was year 2 of this race, we may choose a different run-cation next year, just to change things up. We'll see. Disney is getting more expensive annually, the race gets more costly annually, the expo gets worse each year (more personal shoppers coming and taking the good stuff before runners can even get there) and the freebies are less each year.