On January 10th, my alarm sounded on my iPhone as planned at 2:00 a.m. Though the hotel had forgotten to make a wake up call to me, or perhaps inadvertently woken up the wrong person, I was ready to get on the shuttle at 3:00 a.m. to take me to the start of the 17th Annual Walt Disney World Marathon.
It was very chilly, and I found myself one of the few people dressed for a much warmer marathon. As I was there several hours before the race started, I went over to one of the volunteers wearing a shirt reading “Ask Me!” When I inquired what I should ask him about he replied the race, running strategies or “perhaps more importantly, where are my clothes?”. While its true that I tend to have a great increase in temperature while I run “running hot”, this was one of the coldest Januaries Florida had ever had and it was still hours before sunrise, so he had an excellent point that my running shirt and shorts weren’t the best idea I’d ever come up with.
I was still there, near the shuttle drop off entrance asking questions to pass time when I saw my friend Petra and her husband Scott. I joined them in a small tent we found, and soon others joined, everyone huddled together for warmth. Perhaps as we spent so much time doing that, we found ourselves only able to get into the last starting corral, so that we were in the last group to start.
While waiting for the gun to go off I noticed a lot of interesting strategies for staying warm. From wrapping themselves in finisher’s blankets from the half marathon from the day before, to wearing ski masks (both captured below), to wearing layers of clothes including bathrobes, it seemed everyone was much better prepared for this cold weather than I.
EEach mile had a different mile marker photo on it, as well as a logo of one of the race’s sponsors. This was one of my favorites, as I’ve always liked The Scream as a piece of art. The time shown is the gun time, that is it started counting seconds when the gun went off for the first runners. A runner gets a gun time and the official chip time (which is the actual time they ran the race in as measured by a chip in his or her shoes). As my corral set out roughly 20 minutes after the gun went off, my actual time at this point was still under an hour, and I was still on track to run a little over 4 miles every hour.
A friend has suggested that we would not really run through the parks as they would need them open for visitors. Our race did run through all four parks, at the earliest hours they were not open, later certain areas were separated out by cones as running areas.
Early in the race while I was still making good time and on track to finish way over the 7 hours alloted by Disney, I stopped and took a lot of photos. I wanted Epcot to have the moon in it, so I took a few till I got it just right, complete with cheering people and the blurs of runners passing me. 
I’ve been very lucky that most of the runs I’ve done have been relatively injury free. The last race I did before this one, the Nike Women’s Marathon had been tough on my shins, yet powered on adrenaline I really didn’t notice till after the race how much they ached. Still, since I’ve run long distances since including one 26 miler by myself without noticing shin splints, I thought perhaps it would be like this for this race. Unfortunately, my shin splints came back with a vengeance, hurting very much at about mile 10. As a result, I started walking the race hoping to soon return to running.
I knew a bit of the course details (I usually don’t try to memorize the course so as to enjoy the surprises all the way, yet my mother had read part of the course description to me the night before), so I was really looking forward to Cinderella’s Castle. There were even trumpeters to greet us.
I had expected a lot of opportunities to get photos with the Disney characters. However, I didn’t see too many on the course. Chip and Dale were there in Epcot, I waited in line briefly to get their photo taken, however, they were ushered in before my turn and replaced with Goofy. I decided to keep running instead of waiting. A few characters were along the course that I didn’t recognize, so I didn’t stop. As time grew later and my shins forced me to keep going, I realized I couldn’t really afford a lot of time to stop.
Still, in the Africa exhibit I saw these two and just had to get at least one photo with characters. Around my waist is a pink sweatshirt someone who dressed in many layers gave me at mile 6 to help warm up. As it got warmer racers would cast extra items on the side of the road (to later be picked up and given to charity). I kept the sweatshirt throughout as I didn’t know if it would get incredibly cold again.
It was soon after that photo was taken that word came down about the Official Pacers. The race designates peopele to complete the race in exactly 7 hours by completing each mile in 16 minutes. Officials in bicycles came by at Mile 17 to tell people that the Official Pacer at that time was dressed in all pink and carrying a pink mylar balloon. If she was ahead of you at certain points, they’d stop you from finishing.
So, at mile 18, 20, 21, and finally at 23.5, it was called at certain points that you had to keep ahead of the Pacers (first the pink one, then a girl dressed in orange carrying an orange flag), or you would be stopped, transported to the finish line in a van, and not given a medal. At one point, I think mile 20, it hurt so much to walk, interspersed with as much running as I could to beat the Pacer, that I was ready to give up. Still, I dug down mentally, found the adrenaline, and picked up the pace. After mile 23.5, there were no more pace restrictions, so at that point I knew I would be allowed to finish.
I ended up walking alongside another woman whose name was also Danielle for the last few miles. We encouraged each other to finish, wondered if we’d get a medal even though our time was over 7 hours, and I convinced her we should sprint the last few feet, which we did. It was a great feeling, and it turned out despite our time being over Disney’s official finishing time, we did still get a medal from a volunteer.
The next day, my shin on my left side was so blue and swollen still that I was walking with a slight limp. Being a photographer, I had to document the damage.
My mother asked if I would run this race again, or if the experience with the Official Pacers made it a once in a lifetime race for me. I told her I would run it again, in fact, Petra, Scott and I may just do it again next year. Congratulations again to Petra for completing her first marathon, I knew you could do it, and you did. As for me, for now the medal is a symbol of even a bit more than my first race, since I had to really challenge myself to finish it and I did.
by Danielle Stolman
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