It's nearing 6am and Mike (my brother) and I are walking up to our corral where we'll start the marathon from. We walk past thousands of people, some sitting down and stretching, some standing up and stretching, some peeing the woods. We're about right in the middle of the 12,000 participants of the 2008 Walt Disney World Half Marathon.

 

A couple minutes go by and the gun goes off and runners pour across the starting line. The entire line slowly moves forward; 18 minutes go by before we begin our run. Before I go any further, let's rewind 2 weeks. Aside from my regular running training, I'd been playing soccer every Saturday-- which I figured would also count for the amount of running involved during the games. Two weeks before the race, I sprained my ankle during a high-speed challenge for the ball. It felt OK the moment it happened, and I even finished the game, but later that night I wasn't able to put any weight on it.

 

I went to CVS the next day to pick up an ankle brace.

"Hey, man, are you OK?" says the guy at the counter.

No.

"Heh. It'll be OK." I say optimistically.

 

The brace and a little rest (had that Tues. off) had me walking with barely a limp by Thursday. I even played soccer again (cautiously) the next Saturday.

 

OK, so as I start the marathon, I'm thinking about my feet. Are these new shoes going to help prevent shin splints? Will I get blisters?  How will my ankle hold up? Why did I bother asking that second question? Of course I'm going to get blisters. I had blisters by mile 3. I had set out to run 3, maybe 4 miles before I took a walking break for a few minutes, and getting the blisters just seemed to solidify that scenario. But beyond the blisters, I felt good, so I kept running. Mile 4, Mile 5, through the Magic Kingdom, through the enchanted castle, Mike and I are still running. We didn't actually slow our pace to a walk until after mile 7.

 

After we ran through the Magic Kingdom we started on the road back to EPCOT. Miles 9, 10 and 11 seemed to drag on, and by mile 12, my ankle started to go numb, so I walked until I got to the final mile at the entrance of EPCOT.

 

The track took us in the park and then back out, and as you round the corner and exit the park back onto the parking lot, you finish mile 13 and have only one tenth of a mile to the end. Seeing the Finish line felt so great. It makes you forget about everything else. My ankle was numb, my feet were cramping up, I felt like I stepped on a nail for each of the (about) 3000 steps I took during those last 10 miles. But you put all those aside and pick up the pace for the last stretch.

My goal (and Mike's) was 2 hours, 30 minutes. Mike finished in 2:28:13. I finished in 2:30:03.

 

One of the scariest moments of my run came at around mile 10, when I started to feel the onset of the dreaded "runner's nipple". It's painful to see and embarrassing to get. What happens is that as you run, the salt from your sweat can create friction with the fabric of your shirt. Enough of that friction leads to chafing and then bleeding. Thankfully, I didn't have any bleeding. I did see one poor guy that was bleeding pretty bad from his nipples. It was such a nasty sight to see, and I cringe in pain every time I think about it.

 

After everyone in our group (there were 6 of us in total) finished, we slowly walked back to our cars and headed back to our respective villas to clean up, and then headed back out for some wings and beer. We stopped by Downtown Disney for a bit, and then came back to our place to watch the Patriots beat the Jaguars. Top it all off with a few minutes in the hot tub and a good night's rest, and I'm good to go for the next marathon...which probably won't be until September...so I suppose I had plenty of time to rest up.

 

Here's the rest of my marathon numbers:

Overall Place		5394
Gender Place		2868
Division Place		208
5K Time		32:51
10K Time		1:06:34
15K Time		1:43:54