Monday, September 20, 2010

The Happiest Race on Earth!

I'm so excited to share this guest post from Julie Campbell...
14,000 runners from all 50 states and 15 countries participated in Disneyland’s 5th Annual Half Marathon on Sunday, September 5th. The weekend kicked off with a Health Expo held at the Disneyland Hotel where participants picked up their packets including shirts and D tags for timing purposes.

My family and I drove over from Phoenix, Arizona to meet up with my sister’s family, my brother’s family and our extended family (about 30 in all) on Friday. On Saturday, our family explored California Adventure and then had an awesome dinner at Goofy’s kitchen at the Disneyland Hotel where Disney characters mingle and take pictures with everyone.  The food was great and it was very kid friendly!  I highly recommend it!

The morning of the race, I met up with my brother and sister in the hall of our hotel, Disneyland’s Paradise Pier Hotel at 4:45a.m. to walk to the start of the race near Downtown Disney. A lot of runners dressed up as Disney characters. Krisse and I dressed as Minnie (me)and Cinderella (Krisse). The race started at 6:00a.m. with Mickey and Minnie waving us on! Our brother, Matt, was in the first wave of runners, Corral ‘E’. My sister, Krisse, and I were in Corral ‘E’. We met a lot of really nice people and had such a great time! The course took us through Disney’s California Adventure Park, Disneyland, and the Anaheim A’s ball park. The crowd support was amazing! We even stopped along the way to have our pictures taken with Lilo & Stitch and Cruella DeVille.  With half a mile to go, Krisse and I spotted our families sporting their personalized Mickey shirts reading “Mom’s ChEAR Squad”.  The finish line was near Downtown Disney and everyone that finished the 13.1 miles in under 3 ½ hours received this awesome, commemorative finisher’s medal. 

I will definitely run the Disneyland Half Marathon again next year! It was so much fun that I’m trying to convince my sister to come with me to Florida to run the Walt Disney World Marathon in January . What do you say Krisse?


More about Julie Brock Campbell:
Julie went to the University of Arizona, where she studied Media Arts and Spanish. She is the co-creator/owner of Kids Love Spanish, the award-winning DVD series teaching children Spanish (check out her website here). She is business partners with her sister and best friend, Krisse Brock Kelly. Julie is the proud Mommy of four beautiful boys: Brock, Morgan, Hayden and Keegan. Julie resides with her family in Phoenix, Arizona.

3 comments:

Julie September 21, 2010 at 12:24 PM  

O.k. it's official, Krisse and I are going to run the Disney World Half Marathon in Florida in January! We registered this weekend - woo hoo! Sans kids - which means we will be doing "coaster" rides! Florida or bust!

Unknown September 22, 2010 at 4:49 AM  

My kids and I are doing Mickey's Halloween 5K at WDW on October 2nd and I can't wait! Our training has been pretty lax lately though so I'm sure that I'll be huffin' and puffin' at the end.

We're walkers and we'll be at the back of the pack but I know that we'll have a great tie!

Cherryl September 27, 2010 at 9:32 PM  

I ran this 1/2 marathon and it was great! My 1st 1/2 marathon and I am definitely doing it again. I wish I lived closer to Florida to do the other Disney runs.

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