Yesterday, we ran the Disneyland Half Marathon.

There were 17,000 people running the race with us, and at several points in the course, we felt like we were up close and personal with all 17,000 of them. With the Walt Disney World races, you never leave WDW property, and because everything is so big and spread out there, you get a lot more breathing room and absolutely no traffic. At Disneyland, we spent more time running through the city of Anaheim than we did in the parks themselves, given their smaller size. I was a little sad about this beforehand, counting on only three miles of magic, but after squeezing through the castle with all those people (most of whom actually just stopped running to take pictures of themselves), I deemed it a good thing that we were heading out to the city streets.

The people of Anaheim were great, and the crowds along all the route were fun and festive. The best part was running through Angel stadium, as every Boy Scout in the state of California (or so it seemed!) cheered us on. In the parks themselves, we were up and at it early enough in the morning that the majority of those cheering us on from the rides were the maintenance workers, doing their safety checks and repairs before the parks opened. This was very different from Florida, where the cast members were the ones out in full force, but we actually preferred this, as the blue collar crew was much louder and much more excited to see a bunch of sweaty people running shoulder to shoulder. Which we were. (Did I mention that it was super crowded?)

This was a training run for us on the way to the first marathon of the season. As such, we didn’t expect to be challenged much or pushed too far. We didn’t feel all that tired once we were done, but after about twelve hours post-race, our bodies were telling us another story. As it turns out, 13.1 miles is still a long way! And the mileage only goes up from here. Time to start breaking out the Icy Hot…

Updates coming soon on the rest of our trip!