i can’t even believe that i haven’t share this with y’all yet! i was going back through posts this weekend + realized that i never shared one of the biggest (and coolest) accomplishments ever (and, let’s face it…one of the highlights of 2020 so far.)

well before we were talking about social distancing, i managed to talk one of my besties into joining me in crossing off one of my bucket list items: running the disney princess half-marathon. (also, this was a goal of mine to accomplish after turning forty…i had run halfs when i was younger, but wanted to show my boys that with commitment + hard work, you can do anything you put your mind to.)

in february, we took off for orlando (with our husbands/support team in tow!) and had a long weekend at disney world. we had some great days at the parks, all leading up to the big day: sunday + the race. i have to admit to y’all: i was pretty nervous. i don’t know why. i was having some pre-race knee and hip pain, but my bestie and i had a mantra, “we’re both just stubborn enough to run through whatever was hurting.” (that, and we had each packed a pretty large amount of lidocaine patches + biofreeze patches, so we knew we could numb up whatever hurt.)

race day came, and our wake up calls were at 1:45am, to be on the bus at 3:00am, for the race start at 5:30am. (note: this is all eastern time, and we live in the central time zone, so yeahhhh.) besides an incredibly early race time, the other ah-mazing piece of running this race are the costumes. most people dress in some kind of disney costume to celebrate the race, and to make it more fun! not shocking, we had been planning our costumes for a while before race day!

the race was a-w-e-s-o-m-e! any nerves that had built up the day before + on the mile walk to the start line totally disappeared once we get on the course and started running through the disney property. one of the top two absolute most amazing moments of the morning was getting to run up and into the magic kingdom, on to main street, and making that turn right towards cinderella’s castle (the sun was just coming up, and i will literally never forget how that looked!) and, the number two best moment was running through epcot and heading towards the finish line. there literally was no feeling like it!

post-race, i was super sore, but super proud! will i do it again? it’s super hard to say no, but it’s also super expensive to make that trip! i will say that we have already signed up for the rundisney virtual 5k challenge this summer (which means we will be running a 5k in june, july, and august, here at home…and on the honor system!) and, when we finish the virtual challenge, we get some pretty sweet hardware too!