In a Corral Far Far Away - Star Wars Dark Side Half Marathon

I mean this race only happened on April 23rd and I'm just now writing about it...yikes!

I normally do not run long distance races at this point in the year because a) it's hot b) it's humid and c) it's hot and humid. However, this year the half fell on my birthday  so I had to have the bling. I had to!

My sister met up with me for the race and we hit the expo on Saturday, which is the last day. I have never gone to the expo this late and was shocked at how empty it was. Y'all, it was so empty that I was basically making rapid purchases to the point that my bank froze my account. Whoops!

We spent the afternoon at Magic Kingdom and got our carb on over at Tony's, which tends to be our go to carb loading place.

I have to admit, we are pretty friggin' adorable.

Race morning came and the humidity hit me when I opened the door. I was super pumped....or whatever.  The cool thing with this race was that one of my run the year teams was racing.

Plus, this would be the first half marathon Tanya and I would run together. We make a pretty good running duo. Coincidentally we also make a kick ass wine drinking duo.

The humidity sucked from the word go and I know at one point I looked over at Tanya and said "Don't ever let me sign up for this race again." Now Tanya runs at lunch time when it is 90+ degrees with 100% humidity so she was just trucking along and I was like....

via GIPHY

I was struggling around the 7 mile mark. It was gross outside, I started to cramp and I was just done, unless there was a camera, then I was all...

I sent Tanya ahead once we hit World Showcase. I knew she would kill it and I knew I was holding her back. I kissed my goal of 2:30 goodbye and settled on as close as possible to my previous PR (2:37). I came in at 2:40 and all I wanted was that damn cheese and chips from the snack box and my medal. 

Seriously, this photo encompasses my entire experience. And do we walk to talk about salt in an open wound for a second???? The medal didn't even have the date on it! That was the whole reason I ran the race was to have a medal with my birthday on it!

Overall the race was hot, humid and gross, but if it was in a cooler month I would totally run it every year. I love Star Wars and to see the characters on the course was pretty fantastic. 

Thanks to my team rum mates and my seeeester for making it a birthday to remember!