In 2015 my cousin and I decided to sign up for the 2016 princess half marathon, when we learned that it would be going on while we were there in a family vacation. Over the rest of 2015 we began running, really having no idea what we were doing in terms of training. It was the first half that either of us would be running, and we really had no experience with training.

Come February of 2016, the furthest distance we had ran was 8 miles, and we were nervous going into this race. Had we prepared enough? Would the dreaded balloon ladies catch us and wisk us off the course? What if we pooped our pants!?

We got up early on race morning, and left our hotel around 3:15 am, as we were not staying on Disney property. It was easy to get to the race and park, as there were no crouds that early. We were among the first people to arrive to the staging area, and found a picnic table to hang out at while we ate breakfast. The pre race atmosphere was electric, with nerves running high, as Disney put on a show with characters and DJs.

Eventually we started the walk to our starting corrals, which was much longer than expected! It took us about 15 minutes to get from the pre race area that most people were hanging out in to the actual corrals.

We waited in our corrals nervously, slowly moving up as faster runners were released. This being our first event we did not know that it was important to provide a proof of time from another race and, so we wound up pretty far back.

The race started and we got to the archway magic kingdom sign as the sun was just coming up. It was good weather, especially considering we were used to running in NY winter. The first 6 miles zoomed by as we approached magic kingdom, and before we knew it we were running up Main Street and towards cinderellas castle.

After we ran through the castle and magic kingdom we got to go through a backstage area of the park, where we made a porter potty stop. There were also a few character stops and parade floats out in the back stage area of the race for runners to stop and get photos with.

Then we were on our way to Epcot. Around mile 10 we both were getting throughly exhausted, and we had not learned about race fueling at this point in time, so we were throughly confused when an aid station gave us gels, since we had never tried them before. But we threw caution to the wind and tried them, and kept going with our race.

Soon enough we entered Epcot, and the end of the race was in sight. I remember thinking as we crossed the finish like "how do people do races twice as far as this!?"

All in all, the race was an amazing experience and I would reccomend a rundisney even to any first time racer. Their on course aid and entertainment are excellent, and they make runners of all experience levels feel welcome. I look forward to running this event again in the future.