WDW Marathon Weekend - Day 1 and 2 (Wed/Thursday)

Just thought I'd keep the blog rolling talking about Marathon Weekend 2013. Now that I'm back, 2nd marathon down, I have a lot of thoughts that I felt like sharing.  First, it was a very full weekend, though so much fun.  Not only did I have my running team down there (Team Allears) but also my amazing friends Shane and Steve (who were down there planning their wedding for next year) and also my good friends Brandon, Richenda, Liz, Paul and Paula.  Both Liz and Paul were running the 1/2 marathon as well.

So we headed out last Wednesday.   Just the way our tickets worked out is I worked a half day and we left in the afternoon.   We had a layover in New Orleans.  Even though our plane was late and we didn't have much time to get from one to another, the airlines was cool enough to hold up the plane.   We ended up getting in a bit later than we had hoped but picked up our rental car and checked into a hotel just offsite of Disney property.  Probably didn't get to bed until 1:00 am or so.  I think the theme of this trip was no sleep. :)

At the Airport, little did you know I have a second life as a secret agent...

Next morning woke up bright and early as we had to check out and head over to Old Key West to pick up Paul and Brandon to go to the race expo.  Expo opened at 9:00 am and we wanted to get there a bit before it opened so that we could avoid some of the lines.   Joelle went over to the RunDisney booth to register us for the Double Dumbo Dare in Sept.  Brandon, Paul and I went into the packet pickup area to grab our race packets.

Since we got there pretty early we breezed through the lines pretty fast.  Once over at the expo we ran into some our good friends from TAE as well as Joe Taricani from the Marathon Show.  

Ellie, Anna, Eddie, myself, Joelle, Joe Taricani (from the Marathon show) and Christina all hanging at the expo

After the expo we checked into our hotel (we were staying at Kidani Village for most of the weekend).  After that we headed over to the Magic Kingdom to meet up with Shane and Steve.   I've been on this no-sugar kick for the last couple months but I was giving myself a pass this weekend.  Had a great ice cream cone on main street and then proceeded to go straight into hydration mode.  Joelle and Stevo then did a few rounds of Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom.   Soon after we had to head out to get ready for our dinner at V&A that night.

 

Staying Hydrated at the Magic Kingdom

After heading out of the Magic Kingdom, we headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and to get ready. Our reservation at the Chef's Table was at 5:00 and from the research I read the meal was a 10 course meal and would last 5 hours.  I've never really been to this fancy of a dinner (mandatory that guys had to wear a jacket) and was pretty excited.   It wasn't just Joelle and myself going, but the two of us, Brandon, Liz, Paul, Paula, Richenda, Shane and Steve.  

All dressed up, ready to party!

For those people that care about food porn, they can read my next installment of the blog as I'm going to write a post just about the food at V&A.   If you don't care about that, feel free to skip that post. ;)   Suffice to say, the meal was incredible.  We finished up and was out of there around 10:15.   I headed over to Yee Haw Bobs to see if I could meet up with the rest of the team, but I think most of them had already left.  That was fine as I was fighting a pretty major headache.   I just ended up heading back to the hotel and crashed up.  The next morning I had to be up early to meet Joey Fatone and Jeff Galloway. 

Me and my beautiful wife