Last weekend I ran my 3rd official 5K race, and it was my 2nd runDisney race at Disneyland as well. This was called the “Never Land Family Fun Run 5K” and is part of the overall “Tinker Bell Half Marathon Weekend” hosted by runDisney.
As my 2nd ever 5K, I chose to do the runDisney Cars Land 5K Road Rally, which was part of the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend! I did not realize it at the time, but it is not a timed race, as it is intended to be a “fun run”. Reality is, that I have my faithful RunKeeper app on my phone to keep track of my time and that is all that matters. Needless to say, this race was of an entirely different scale than my first 5K many months earlier.
I was a little nervous, as I knew quite a few people that would also be doing this run, and felt a little self-conscious about running into them. It is important to remember who you are running for, and why. As long as you are running for yourself, who cares what other people think!
Disney calls this a “fun run” and it is certainly the most appropriate description. The scenery is a lot of fun, as you run through the different “lands” and get to see the backstage areas. All along the route, you encounter different characters with photo opportunities. Lines do form for the characters, but they seem to go pretty quickly. I’m still new to the whole running thing, and decided to keep focused on running and skip the characters.
As the name implied, the finish line was on Route 66 in Cars Land of Disney California Adventure. Oddly, they miscalculated and ran out of the bottled water they were giving out at the end. However, they gave out boxes of sample products and sponsors of the event.
It was a great experience, and I would highly recommend signing up for a runDisney event!
RunKeeper Details : http://runkeeper.com/user/bigwavedave/activity/114398753
Over the Christmas holidays, I was challenged to do a 5K by the end of June. I quickly discovered and registered for the Go Green Saint Patrick’s Day Half Marathon. I was using my trusty RunKeeper app as I ran, and quickly noticed discrepancies between the mile markers and what RunKeeper was telling me. It also seemed as if the path was different than I had thought I understood from the maps which had been posted. I crossed the finish line to discover I had only gone ~2.7mi (~4.3K).
The official response from the race organizers
We are well aware that there were a portion of your who were affected by course misdirections on the 5k and half marathon courses – for this we sincerely apologize. The course was set up and marked on Friday and all chalk marks were washed away by the heavy rains. Every attempt was made to remark the course on race morning, but clearly, there were some issues. We are absolutely not making excuses, and are truly sorry to all who were affected by the confusion caused by the weather and volunteer misinformation.
Overall, I feel cheated at trying to accomplish my first 5K. I feel as if I was on a really good pace and was going to finish well ahead of my planned goal. I was also very disappointed when I went to pick up my race packet. The biggest shirt size they had was a Large!? I certainly would have liked at least an XL, even though it wouldn’t have been long enough. Combining the shirt issue and the distance error, it was fairly disappointing.
I am a new runner and learning as I go through this adventure. I had no real “equipment”, other than some Asics shoes that I used when going to the gym in the past. As I’ve been progressing, I’ve identified different areas that I needed to acquire gear that would make my running easier and more enjoyable!
One of the first things that I was encouraged to purchase was a proper set of running shorts. I did some Google searches and found an article on Running World called “Gear for Big and Tall Runners”. The article recommended the [amazon asin=B004EPY0W6&text=Pearl Izumi Men’s Maverick 2 In 1 Short&chan=default], which I purchased from Amazon.com. Unfortunately, O found the sizes to be too small and the cost a little high. I ended up returning the shorts and decided I could survive with some normal basketball shorts I already had.
Now that I’ve decided to do the 5k, it was time to determine a training plan. I had heard a lot about the “Couch to 5K” method of training. I was surprised to find that there were a lot of different plans, calling themselves the Couch to 5K plan. It seems as if Cool Running had the original C25K running plan, that became popular. I’ve kind of done a mash-up of the different plans I’ve found out there, trying to lean towards the harder end of them and aiming for a 30min run.
I have started a journey of running… all 6’4″ of myself. I’m registered for a 5K in March, and now I need to prepare properly for a successful completion! Hopefully I can help other tall runners, with what I learn along the way. To learn a little more about how I got to this point, check out the About Page!
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