Disney Marathon Weekend 2011

January 16, 2011

Disney Marathon Weekend 2011 Post Race Wrapup

All in all it was a successful and very enjoyable Marathon trip this year. I always enjoy my time with Matt and this year we did many attractions that we had never done together or done at all, so that made the trip special as well. He seemed to enjoy the time away very much and he had the added bonus of not have to get up and run the race this year. When it is just the two of us we can make decisions pretty quickly about where to go, what to see, what to eat, when to get up, etc. I always like having my wife and daughter with us but things can be a lot more streamlined when only two opinions are involved. I’m not sure who is coming down with me next year, but it may just be a two person event again.

As for the race, I learned a few things this year. First, I need to loose a few pounds. I was hovering around 199 at the time of the race, which is not huge, but I could definitely feel the extra weight on my knees by the time I crossed the finish line. I have been under 200 for going on 15 years now but my ideal weight would be around 180 so I have set a goal of 185 by the end of February. I would actually like to get down to 175 but I will probably put on 5 pounds or so of muscle with the weight program.

I plan on doing some calorie counting, which I have never done before and will enlist the help of the ‘MyFitnessPal’ application on my Android phone. I checked into a few apps including Calorie Counter from FatSecret (terrible name), but I liked the interface and more accurate barcode scanner of My Fitness Pal. I will do a review of my progress in the coming weeks.

The second thing I learned was I am not very good at pacing. I had planned on running with the Clif Bar pace group to hit my 2:15 goal and had stopped at their booth at the expo to meet then and confirm that there would be a group in my corral. They said there was and to look for the girl holding the stick with balloons and the 2:15 sign. I was all psyched to run with them since I was going solo this year, but when I got to the ‘C’ corral, there was no pace group. I spotted a two hour group in the ‘B’ corral but nothing in my area. So long story short, I went out way to fast and went off the pace at about mile 8. I know I can’t depend on others all the time so I need to get better at pacing myself and knowing how my body is doing even without a watch.

Speaking of a watch, my Garmin ForeRunner 305 was pretty much useless this year, which was a bit disappointing. I wanted to compare my three times (D-TAG which clips to your shoe, Runkeeper on my phone and the Garmin), but only the DTAG and my phone were accurate. The Garmin was telling me I had gone a mile when I still had about 100 yards to go. This my be my excuse to try the 310XT or to look for something completely different. I love RunKeeper, but the phone can be a bit heavy to lug around sometimes.

As painful as those races are, I can’t want to go down in 2012 and try for a new PR with whoever I can get to run with me. It was only about 3 hours after this years run that I decided I wanted to do it again next year. So if you are interested in joining me in the Magic Kingdom next year, leave me a comment and lets plan to race together.

January 12, 2011

Disney Marathon Weekend 2011 Day 6

Today is the saddest day of all and a very hard day for me. I find it difficult to be in Disney World and not go into the parks even if we just go in to people watch and take in the atmosphere. Matt and I decided not to burn a full days pass since there were a few outside the parks things that we wanted to do anyway and we could probably fill the time before we need to leave for the airport.

We checked out of Bay Lake Towers, stored our bags and took a bus to Downtown Disney to get something for Lorie and Jenna. The are has change quite a bit form last year an Pleasure Island is a shell of what it was when it first opened. I only saw 2 clubs and could not tell if they were even open since the bars did not open till after 7pm normally. The whole island is just restaurants and a few shops and quite a bit of demolition and construction going on. The West Side is pretty much the same with the swapping out of a few stores for some more current ones. One big store that is gone is the Virgin Megastore which took up a huge two story warehouse. In its place is a ‘Build an RC Car Shop’ which did not even take up all of the first floor of the previous tenant. It is kind of a Build a Bear for boys. Build a basic car then trick out out with customizations and drain the credit card.

We did a bit of shopping for about and hour before taking another bus from Downtown Disney over to the Animal Kingdom Lodge villas to see the DVC rooms. We have never stayed there so we wanted to see if it was something we might consider in the future. The rooms were nice, very similar to the other DVC studio and one bedroom accommodations, except for the African inspired furnishings. The property was appealing as a novelty, but I still don’t like the fact that it is so far removed from everything else. If you stay there to see the animals outside your balcony, that is nice, but after about an hour of that I have seen what I need to see and want to move on, so I don’t think we will be staying there anytime soon.

While on property, Matt and I had a nice lunch at Sanaa where we split a burger and had a nice salad sampler, just enough food to hold us over for the rest of our last day. We grabbed our final bus from Animal Kingdom Lodge to the Magic Kingdom then had a short walk back to Bay Lake Towers to catch our Magical Express to the airport. We still had about an hour to kill so Matt suggested we go to the rec center and play some shuffleboard to pass the time. This was another first for Matt and it only took him one game to catch on. I took the first match and he took the second. He was a avid watcher of curling during the Olympics so he knew the basic premise of what to do and caught on very fast. He now has the skills to become a hustler when he retires to warm climates.

The Magical Express arrived right on time and got us to MCO about 1.75 hours before the flight to Charlotte. I checked on my Droid and both our flights ( to Charlotte and to ORD) were clear of weather all the way through. We boarded on time and settled into 2A and 2C for the first leg of the flight. I was a bit disappointed that we did not get a meal on the US Air flight but they did double up on the drinks and it was very smooth ride all the way.

We landed in Charlotte and grabbed some fast food chicken ( I took all the skin off mine and ignored the biscuit as next week starts my calorie counting test, which I will outline in a later post) and I passed the 1.5 hour layover time by catching up on some of my kindle books and my pursued new high scores on a few of his handheld games.

We boarded the flight to ORD and settled into our same two seats for the last leg home. On the flight from MCO, I had put the Thumper stuffed animal that I got for Jenna on the large arm rest space between Matt and myself, and it ‘rode’ there for most of the flight. I placed him in the same spot when we boarded and as I looked up I noticed we had the same flight crew from the previous flight even though it was a different plane. The flight attendant said ’Are you following us?’, in reference to the same two guys in the same two seats with the same rabbit between us, on a different airplane. I said ‘Yes, and I am hoping you are taking us someplace warm tomorrow. Where are we off to next?’

This flight was equally smooth and in no time we were landing in Chicago. As we pulled off the runway
I called my wife who was waiting at the Oasis and told her to head on over to pick us up. As most of you know, ORD and MDW are VERY strict about waiting at the curb to pick up arriving passengers. They will make you circle endlessly or have you park way over in the cell phone lot, which is OK. Lorie prefers to wait at the O’Hare Oasis since she can get there early if need be and have some coffee, use the free Wi-Fi and just wait for our call. The timing works out well because by the time we get to the gate, deplane, and walk all the way out to terminal 1 she is just about there.

I will have some reflections about the race in my next post, but for now, home again, glad to be here, but already planning the next trip.

January 10, 2011January 5, 2022

Disney Marathon Weekend 2011 Day 4

Day 4 started with a bit of rain as we got ready to head over to the Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom. We first had to check out of the Beach Club and store our bags for transfer to Bay Lake Tower. If you are staying at another Disney hotel, just need to take your bags down to the bell stand, or call to have them picked up, and they will take them over to your new hotel with a few hours. When you arrive at your new hotel and check in, just call down and they will bring up the bags to your new room. If you check out of one hotel early to hit the parks make sure to take with you what you need for the day, as you can’t usually check in to your new room till 3 or 4 in the afternoon.

We walked over to Hollywood Studios after checking out and arrived just before it started to rain again. We ducked into the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular and a few other rides before making our way to Toy Story Mania. I had always wanted to try that ride but that ride is very popular and the lines are always huge. We thought we would be able to use out VIP passes but the fast passes were all gone by 11am. Undaunted, Matt suggested we ask the cast member who was standing in front of the closed fast pass machine if there was anything we could do with our VIPs. It happened that this particular cast member was from Pittsburgh and Matt was wearing his Pirates shirt so we had a very pleasant conversation for a few minutes before he reached into his pocket and pulled out two passes that where set to expire in 15 minutes. We were on the ride within 3 minutes and had a great time. Thanks Richard you are the man and that is the Disney spirit above and beyond.

I had to buy a poncho after that since it had started to come down pretty good. We did a few more rides with not much wait and then headed over to Animal Kingdom to attempt Expedition Everest. I say attempt because I had done it a few years ago with Matt as the very first ride of the day and it wrecked me for the whole day. Today it was not too bad and I discovered that if I felt like I was going to hurl, I just had to close my eyes to get through it. I know that takes away from the experience but I was doing this one so Matt had a riding partner, not for me.

We did all the open rides except the spinning thing outside Dinosaur and that would have made us both throw up big time. This was the first time I had closed down Animal Kingdom so we got to see the little dance party they have near the exit as you are leaving. Very cute to see all the little kids and some parents dancing with them

We took a bus back to the hotel and went to check into the Bay Lake Towers. When we got to the room it was still a 1 bedroom, so I figured the charged me one bedroom points instead of studio points. I went down to the front desk and sure enough she had booked me into the 1 bedroom for 2 nights and charged the 1 bedroom rate for the two nights. After another 20 minutes of ‘fixing’ things. I went back up to the room to wait for the new room to be ready. I went back down to the front desk got the new keys, went back up, moved the bags from the 5th floor to the 14th floor and took the old keys back down. At least we ended up with a nice high floor and a good view.

We quickly changed for dinner and walked over to the Contemporary Hotel to catch the monorail to dinner at Epcot. The Bay Lake tower is connected to the Contemporary by a bridge on the 5th floor so you can get to all the transportation easily. We boarded the monorail for the Ticket and Transportation Center (we need to change monorails there to get to Epcot) and the driver comes on the loudspeaker and says he needs to power down the systems and software to reboot to train. That was a first for us and it added an extra 5 minutes to the journey so we were almost late for our dinner reservation.

We enjoyed and excellent dinner at La Hacienda de San Angel, the new table service restaurant in the Mexico pavilion on the water. I tried their Margarita flight which is five samples of some of their more exotic margaritas and enjoyed the one on the right the most, the Orange Mango Fire. It includes tequila, ginger liqueur, orange juice, mango, fresh lime juice, tobasco sauce and Tajin chili powder on the rim.

We chose this place and the 7:45 reservation so we could have a nice relaxing dinner and then see the Illuminations fireworks from our table. The restaurant dims that lights and pipes in the music from outside so you get the full experience except for the evenings cold weather.

After dinner we headed back to the hotel to go to the Top of The World Lounge to watch the BCS Championship where the Oregon Ducks fumbled their way to a loss to Auburn. A bit disappointing as I had hoped for a non SEC team to win it just once, but with Purdue not even in the hunt this year it was a bit hard to get into it.

Time to get some sleep before our last day in the parks.

January 5, 2011

Disney Marathon Weekend 2011 Is Almost Here

Only two more days till I leave for Florida for the Disney Marathon weekend. I am both excited and sad at the same time because I always have a great time at that event, but none of my family is running with me this year. I will be posting throughout the weekend like I did at last years event, this being the one year anniversary of starting my blog.

I will have various technology with my like I always do and I am going to try a few tracking solutions so those who are interested can track my progress or if you are not up at 5:30am on January 8th, you can at least view my path when I have finished.

One of the technologies I will be trying is from InstaMapper.com . Instamapper lets me post my location in near real time for others to see. My location is posted every 60 seconds so you need to refresh your browser if you are following along as I run, or you can just click around the map if you are viewing post race. Instamapper is made more for tracking me while driving but I want to see how it works while running.

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The other technology is from RunKeeper which is made for tracking workouts including running. I tried this during the Bonefield Express on Thanksgiving but I don’t think I gave it enough time to lock onto the GPS as my chip time and the Runkeeper time were way off.

Regardless of what tech I use, or no tech at all, I will still be posting what Matt and I experience this weekend. Good luck to all the participants in this years , Half Marathon, Full Marathon and Goofy (running both the half and the full).