The day of the Donald race was an early one. Make that an EARLY one.

I had trouble sleeping the night before, partly because of nerves but mainly because our air conditioner in the Corny Stars hotel malfunctioned sometime around midnight. It kept shutting off with an awful banging sound, and as I tried to fix it by the light of my phone’s screen, I silently and not so silently cursed Wes’s ability to sleep through it all. He’d be nice and fresh for the run in the morning, whereas I would feel like this…

Oh, yeah. He made me take another picture to make all of you out there in social media land think that I was actually excited about running the first leg of my 39.3 mile journey.

Hooray for getting up at 2:30 after only falling asleep at 1:00!

Despite my early morning grumpiness and our mad dash to make it to our corral in time, the half marathon went very well. I’ve already blogged about it here for those who want more details.

Once we completed the run, we were feeling awake again and not at all sore, surprisingly enough. Our plan had been to spend the day at Hollywood Studios, and after we got cleaned up, we headed that direction. I’m not sure how we managed it, but it was the perfect day for the park, as it was really uncrowded. The other runners all must have gone to other parks, because we had cast members stopping us to see the Donald medals, telling us that they hadn’t seen any so far that day.

Anyway, even with the small crowds, we figured the Fast Passes were running out quickly for the big rides at Hollywood Studios. Since I have absolutely no interest in ever riding the Tower of Terror again (once is enough, thank you), we headed over to the other side of the park to Fast Pass Star Tours, thereby making it highly unlikely that we’d get early enough Fast Passes for the other big rides. When you’re there to run early morning races, you have to give up something, and late nights at the park during the weekend, at least, were what we gave up. After we got our passes, we tried to grab lunch at the Backlot restaurant next door, but they seemed to be having trouble with their registers, forcing us to go have lunch at Pizza Planet. Which wasn’t a sacrifice for me at all, but probably was for Wes. But he did it with a smile!

I wanted a picture with our Donald medals and our bright yellow Donald shirts, and instead of getting it taken in front of the big Hollywood Studios hat, we got in line to get a picture with Phineas and Ferb.

Worth the five minute wait, this picture was.

And speaking of Yoda-speak (how’s that for a transition from Disney to Star Wars? Smoother than the actual merger that happened last year between the two, it was), our next stop was Star Tours, which NEVER gets old because they switch around different combinations of scenes so that, unless you’ve ridden it sixty-something times, you never get the same experience. Seriously. We rode at the same time as a boy Ana’s age, and he left the ride animatedly chattering about how it was JUST LIKE REAL LIFE (in all caps, just like that), reminding us that Walt Disney World is never as magical as it is when you have small children with you. Yes, we were once again missing the girls. Which is why we headed straight for the gift shop and bought them stuffed Yoda toy souvenirs, of course.

We went over to the Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular show next, and after thirty minutes of fight sequences, explosions, and general mayhem, I concluded that this? Was a show for boys. Wes couldn’t believe that I was unimpressed by what I had just seen, but eh? Not my thing. This, again, reminded us of the girls, as Wes assured me that a five year old boy would have been on his feet the whole time, shouting, “Hit him again!,” whereas our sweet girls would have been in tears, shouting, “Why are they hitting each other?!” Ahh, the difference in boys and girls — both young and old.

We could both agree on the aweseomeness of Muppet Vision 3D, though, so we made sure to catch it right after the stunt show. Then, just to satisfy our curiosity, we went by Toy Story Midway Mania to check on Fast Pass return times, and once we saw that they were well past 8pm, we called the other big attractions a loss for the day. We’ll make up for it on our next visit!

After milkshakes from the dockside diner (don’t judge — still fueling up for a marathon), we headed back to the hotel, where we ate an early dinner and fell asleep by 8:00. No kidding. It was a super, super restful night, which made for great preparation for the big 26.2 miles waiting for us the next morning…