This was my 63rd half marathon. Some are harder than others and I’d say this definitely ranks up there as one of the hottest I ever done.
I spent a few hours on a Halloween costume that I dutifully packed away in my suitcase for race weekend. All the pieces would hold up for 13.1 miles. However, as the weekend of races were underway, it seemed as though the southern California heat wave would hit its highest high on the Sunday of the half marathon. Lucky me!
The morning of the race, I read a bit about the different flag alert levels. Green means we’re good to go. Yellow is proceed with caution. Red is critically hot and highly advised to stop. Black means that the race is over, cancelled before or during the race. (I’ve been at one race — Rock n Roll Nashville — when it hit black while I was still on the course!) So, in an abundance of caution, and in the interest of actually finishing the race, Iditched half of my Halloween costume before I even left my hotel. Glad I did because there would be no way to finish the race because of the heat in all of those unbreathable materials (mainly the tutu and the witch hat). I’ll just have to save that costume for another occasion.
I had a few race goals. First, I needed to finish under the cutoff. Second, I needed to finish under the Dopey minimum pace of 16:00min/mi. (I didn’t want to see any balloon ladies or bike security.) That seems to be my bare minimum nowadays. In order to hit those goals, I had to negotiate a few things with myself:
- Not stopping for character photos or a whole lot of selfies along the way
- Running through the parks without stopping for pics (but moving videos were okay)
- Strategically stopping at a bathroom with little traffic (in my case, I used the bathroom in Batuu), and
- Using more aggressive run/walk intervals
In the wise words of runDisney legend Alan Young, there’s no better souvenir than the finisher medal. I figured I could also get castle pics later in the day, which was good enough for me.
Bathroom breaks are tough to pull off in the heat/humidity too…it is a sport trying to peel off your clothes to only have to pull them back on into the exact same spot as before. Not doing so can lead to some discomfort or worse, chafing!
After 6 miles around the parks, we entered Anaheim through Ball Road over the 5 freeway. From there I opted for 2 min run 30 second walk intervals. In my latest Galloway reads, he says that there aren’t a lot of benefits yielded from longer walk breaks (unless you’re injured). So I followed the buzzes of my interval timer, kept my head down, and did what I was told. I kept going through the industrial areas of Anaheim, and eventually down a very narrow bike path that was not closed off to traffic. There were a few cyclists trying to navigate the crush of runners. Hopefully there were signs up and maybe they just missed them. There was also a hairpin turn that was a bit difficult to make given the crowd size.
I had gotten a warning from my husband about the baseball diamond track being very slippery. Once I got into the stadium, I realized that he was right and I pretty much stopped running/jogging and just focused on walking it. I really did not want to slip and fall with only a few miles left to go in the race. I used the opportunity to drink up. It was also my final sunscreen reapplication zone. My face still sizzled, and it was quite painful even hours after the race was over. (I had since gotten some sun recovery cream that has calmed it down.)
The run back into the Disneyland area was fairly uneventful. The race began and ended near the Toy Story lot. The finishers chute was smaller than the ones at WDW, but they still had plenty of announcers, confetti, and photographers for all of us. I received my magical Disney snack box, medal, and went to go find my squad. I immediately popped out my sun umbrella, which I dutifully ran with but never actually stopped to open for fear of it bumping into someone and hurting them. However, at the finishers area, the sun umbrella was very much welcomed!
I was overall happy with my time. It wasn’t my best but not too far off from my springtime races. Given the heat, I’d say I did pretty well in comparison to those earlier times.
Amara in Training 