Bret

Disney Marathon 2025 - This was scheduled nearly a year ago when Bradlea and Marcus had the idea of doing the half and having me do the full marathon with a long family weekend with the grandchildren with visits to the parks to bookend the vacation.   Richie signed up as well but as late as Friday had told me he was nursing a slight calf injury and was not going to run. Then Saturday morning he called and had just finished a 12 mile training run and perhaps FOMO decided he was going to make the drive over from his home in St. Pete.  I was excited to having the chance to run with someone instead of solo.  Funny story - he recently bought a Sprinter van and decided to drive over late Saturday evening declined to sleep in our hotel room and instead slept in the camper van in the parking lot.   
 

The race start is 4:30 am so we were heading to the Epcot parking lot by 2:45 am.  Richie had to get special treatment to get his bib number on the morning of the race and the security layout kept us from the comfort of his vehicle in the relatively cold conditions for Florida of the low 40's.   Side note - with the race starting so early - many of us had to use the restrooms along the course a time or two - since it was a bit off of our "regular" schedules.  :) 

Due to his lack of training and lack of mental preparation this ended up being a buddy run with him - which was really great.  We went out easy and ran together from start to finish and got a negative split.   The course is actually quite uninspiring - mostly of it taking place on service roads and parking lots between the various Disney parks.  Richie was really having a hard time with the lack of spectators and scenery - but perked up when we were in the parks and when we encountered character photos areas.  Oddly, they have Disney characters placed along the course where runners will stop and get a photo with say, Donald Duck or Darth Vader - also oddly, people were lining up for these photos.  

Anyway, this was very much a training run effort heartrate-wise until the last few miles where I was fatigued and started to lose form and we were going a bit faster toward the end.   

Marathon #48 is now in the books.   Good to run a race with Richie from start to finish for the first time ever too.