Tennessee Gals Will Run For Wine

We did it, we did it, we did it! This weekend was a long vacation weekend filled with friends, food, wine, fun, and running at....

DISNEY WORLD!! YEA!!! We ran the Wine and Dine half marathon at EPCOT Center. You run a half mile, then you get to eat and drink around the world at the countries located in their World Showcase. FUN!!!!!

A few months ago girlfriend Jenny very bravely set out to lose weight and get healthy with the ultimate goal of running this half marathon in Orlando, FL. I ordinarily go on a girls' weekend to New Orleans, and since her trip coincided with that one, I opted to go with her to Central Florida instead. Jenny had never been on a girls' trip, so she invited her passel of running peeps who were planning on it, and I invited my usual girls' weekend suspects. The only two regulars who couldn't make it (sniff) were Pretty Princess Landry (who surprise "visited" us via email video) and Kristina. We missed you both! But managed to have fun without you.

Taking the challenge to train and run for their first half marathons were sisters, Amanda and Emily Womac.  I was worried about Amanda taking on a half initially, because... well... she had bad knees and wasn't a runner. She proved me wrong almost immediately - she joined a gym and stuck to her running schedule. Both she and Emily stepped it up and prepared well for the big day.

May I please say that both Jenny and Amanda are quite literally new women. They both were beautiful ladies to begin with - but they both lost weight in this process and look simply amazing. I like being seen in public with them so people think I'm cooler than I am. I'm so proud of them both, and I know they are both ten times prouder of themselves than that. WAY TO GO!

Wait... did I say DAY? A few of us (ahem) signed up for the race day of October 1 at ten... and then a few weeks later noticed the 10 PM disclaimer.

Sigh... game ON!!!

But first things first! Let's get there!

me and my fellow fear of flying compatriot, jo case; brave jenny, ames hussar and kelly justice (uh, great name or WHAT? i think she secretly fights crime at night)

through security - by the by, you still can't take liquids on an airplane WHOOPS! look who forgot and had to buy new face cream today...

i sweet talked our cabbie dennis into a pit stop by crawling over three rows of seats to plop down in the passenger seat beside him

and we stayed on property! how very disney of them... upon arrival at the all-star music resort! my roomies were emily and amanda, and my snuggle bunny for the weekend was shawn mason! other room was jenny, jo, amy and kelly. btw, i at first pushed the four-to-a-room situation thinking it would be too tight... it really wasn't. we only slept there - we were going full tilt the whole time.

We only had one day in the park. Precious moments that must be savored! Half the company went shopping and the other half spent the day at:

the happiest place on earth. this is jenny's first visit to the magic kingdom!

Being a former cast member (ahem, I am a Disney nerd), I was all about showing the girls a good time. We started heading toward the left into Adventureland...

jungle cruise

To Frontierland....

splash mountain

into fantasyland - it's a small world. at the end of the ride i asked jenny what she thought of it, and she replied: "dang. there's a lot of them in there. what if they turn on you?" i had to agree that would not be very magical.

more fantasyland - look at how hard jenny is hammering down on her teacup. she and amanda couldn't walk off the ride. 

Into Tomorrowland...

when jenny ate my dust she said she had the pedal to the metal the whole time

amanda chauffeurs emily

i had never been on this ride - astro orbiter! i think it's meant for children - jenny and i had a hard time smushing the two of us into our rocket.

we yelled to the womac girls on the ride, and when amanda turned around she said "how'd you get up there?" jenny yelled to pull up on the lever and.....

their flight commenced

We headed back to the hotel after two rounds of Space Mountain, one trip on Big Thunder Railroad, and a visit to the Haunted Mansion. We caught up with the other ladies, cleaned up and headed out to supper at a fancy Irish pub, Ragland Road, in Pleasure Island.

da ladies out for a night on the town

poor amanda made the mistake of eating two bites of her rice krispie treat mickey mouse head smushed in heath bar  and putting in my purse for safe keeping. yeah. i ate it.

but she forgave me!

Next morning, time to prep for the big race!!!! The shopping crow had all gotten their race packets the day before, so the Magic Kingdom contingency went to the ESPN Wide World of Sports to check in.

jenny's first half marathon packet pick up experience

THEN, we went to the pool. And rested. All day. Got up, ate some lunch, splashed around in the pool a bit... then, I felt tired. So I went to the room and took a nap. For two hours. It was honestly a good thing I did that because it felt like a new day when I woke up. So I took a shower, got dressed, ate some "breakfast" and... went running.

we named ourselves 'tennessee gals will run for wine' since we were running in the epcot 'wine and dine' half marathon. here we are on some big boots outside our hotel room pre-race. tommy designed us all tshirts which were a huge hit!

seriously - we were asked for photos and got many, many compliments on how cute our shirts were. one stranger was staying at our hotel and asked if she could buy one of them from us, and since we had extras we gave her one to keep.

In a very Disney-esque way - everything was planned and organized to a T. Since the race was on property, they asked you get to the start line two hours ahead so that they can make sure the roads are clear from traffic and ready to go pre-race time. You'd think that'd be boring right? Hanging out for two hours in a field? Nope - it's Disney World. They hired a DJ to keep the party rockin' (I now know how to dance MJ's Thriller if anyone is interested) and keep people entertained and pumped until race time. We lost poor Shawn (she was running the second leg of the relay with Jo and had to be bussed out to Animal Kingdom at 8:30 POOOOOOO!) but had fun chitting and chatting, stretching and dancing until time to corral!

waiting to get dis party started 'aight?

This race isn't terribly competitive. As in, I gave an honest answer to my expected race finish time (I had to back it up with official race results from another half/full marathon - I think I used my Knoxville finish time of 5:15 and said I thought I'd finish in 2:30) and was put in the first corral. I've NEVER been put in the first corral. At first I thought I'd hang behind and run with the girls - but we were all put in five different corrals that started five minutes later than each previous corral's gunfire. So. What the hey.

me in corral a

here's how close i was to the start!

Now: confession time. I didn't train. I am a loser, I know. I could give you every excuse in the world, but I won't - I didn't train for this. I really truly kept up an AWESOME ten minute mile pace until about mile 6 and burned it up all too early. BUT. I wasn't worried about finishing. I knew that if I could get to mile 7 and mile 8, I would be golden to the finish. Mile 9 was in my old stomping grounds, the Disney Hollywood Studios (a la former Disney/MGM Studios) and I knew if I could make it there, I would have more fun burning up three miles there just looking around and being nostalgic. I was right. When I got there, I stopped pretending to try and run... and just had fun - and that's the point, right? I stopped and took pictures galore whenever I wanted to.

backlot vending machine at beauty and the beast where i was an attraction hostess (i.e. i made sure people had seats). i bought a lot of diet cokes out of this machine in the day.

beauty and the beast marquee at tots (theater of the stars DISNEY NERD! i already made the disclaimer!)

mann's chinese theater replica which houses the great movie ride where i worked. somewhere in here there is a paint hand print of mine with the signature "megan venable" no smith. i saw a manager outside during the race and really resisted the temptation to ask if i could go in. i thought she would say no, and... besides it may be painted over (in my mind it's not) and i was in the middle of the race anyway. ask me about johnny weissmuller sometime. 

i didn't work here. i lived here with yakko, wakko and dot.

lightening mcqueen was there - i took this pic for max

some things stay the same - some change. ny street is now some kinda christmas town - they had carols playing and everything! i like christmas so no complaints here! 

In the "stay the same" category:

muppetvision 3-d theater. this was my home base during the college program. same fountain, building and music in the courtyard. it really made me smile!

welcome to muppetvision THREE DEEE!!!

Then... things got dicey....

YOU ARE NOT MY FATHER!!!

So - the half goes out of my Disney home base at mile 11. Pffft. I can phone in two miles. I don't even care that I'm running my worst half ever - too much fun. Can't be bothered with details. Guess who's waiting at the finish of the Wine and Dine half?

mickey and minnie don't even care how nasty and sweaty gross i am

NOW! Here's where the girls' weekend trip gets unpredictable. Jo was the first one into EPCOT; being the first leg of the relay, she was bussed from Animal Kingdom right to EPCOT. She was our Mrs. G (a la Facts of Life) and kept tabs on everyone via electronic bib sign-ups (you can sign up for alerts to come to you via email for most big races - you wear a chip that lets the subscriber know when someone's number crosses four checkpoints in a race) and text message. Once all eight girls are present and accounted four, I expected us to wine and dine for a half hour, but be pooped and elect to leave EPCOT well before the 3 AM closing time.

Whoops. Darn you, adrenaline....

All of us ran our own races. Because we started in different corrals and run at different paces, no one ran together, but we all at least saw one of the crew at least once during the race. We all got finished, high five'ing our successes, sharing stories, talking and laughing and visiting and "let's go here first!"-ing, and before I knew it there was never even a mention of going back to the hotel. It was very chilly, and since most of us were soaked to the skin in sweat and not prepping additional clothes (wet clothes+stop running+cool temperature+wind=FREEZING!!!!) we bumped around until we found the only open gift shop; the official DisneyRun shop; which was officially sold out of sweatshirts, long sleeve shirts, jackets... even sold out of normal tshirts sized S-M. The three coldest amongst us (me, Emily and Shawn) all looked at each other... we were all having fun... no one wanted to leave... so Emily said it all for us when she declared she'd just get drunk and forget she was cold. We all laughed - it was true no one wanted to leave (but drinking wasn't a 'get warm' option for pregnant Shawn!)

This is when my institutional knowledge of all things Disney came in very handy (Disney nerd no more, thankyouverymuch). We left that gift shop and started up around the countries to look for food and drink, when upon passing Mexico I remembered that a) Mexico's showcase was open tonight (not all the showcases were), b) their showcase sold ponchos.

Aye caramba. Best $40 I ever spent.

ole!

Too too soon... the park closed and we had to go back to the hotel.

cold amanda and shawn in shawn's newly purchased mexican snuggie

We got back to the hotel about four, showered, giggled, laughed and finally rested our heads in bed about five AM. I can't tell you when the last time I've been up that late was. I would like to point out that I went to BED at FIVE AM Sunday. I woke up for work at 5:30 AM Monday. What a difference a day makes....

Ride home, our cabbie from Thursday night, Dennis, was so impressed with my seat-clambering, monkey-like abilities, he awarded me with:

a gorilla of my own. the girls made me run it through security twice to make sure there was no nanny-cam inside. they also stressed that since dennis wasn't from around here that in certain cultures the gift of a stuffed gorilla may constitute marriage, but i don't believe them. dennis the cabbie was my friend. please meet my stuffed gorilla, dennis. yes, he's wearing my poncho.  

Best moment of the trip? Arrival at the Mowrer Casa to find:

a made-with-love lottie sue and matt mowrer sign made just for jenny

Here are the lessons I learned this trip:

• If you're going to run a half marathon, for Pete's sake, train for it.
• Knock before opening a hotel door, even if you have a key.
• Whisper outside of hotel room doors. 
• Pack more underwear than you think you will need. Bikini bottoms with metal accents will get you an extra pat down in security.
• Don't buy TOO much extra wine "just in case."
• Oh yes, and... it is, indeed, a small world after all.

So so so so so proud of my friends. Yea US!