woensdag 3 oktober 2018

The half marathon at Disneyland Paris 2018

Sunday, September 23rd 2018

Today was the day! The last day of the 36K challenge, and to complete it we had to run 21.1K to earn another 3 medals! Yes, three medals! One for the half marathon, one for the 36K and the 31K. RunDisney France decided that when you're doing the 36K, you automatically participate in the 31K challenge. An extra medal? I'll take it! But first, we had to run a half marathon!

The alarm went off again at 5:30AM, we left the hotel room 20min later. Yeah, some sleepy eyes here. Oh, and that's the only picture with the Hook, because I forgot to take it with me to the corrals...

We looked outside and we saw that it was raining. So I decided I wouldn't bring my camera, all pictures are made by my phone. Yesterday it was quite chilly in the corral, so we put on a vest that we would throw away and a very fashional garbage bag. It was warm and humid outside at 6AM! We didn't really need the vests, but we did need the trash bag, because it was a heavy drizzling kind of rain!


The pre race entertainment was brought by Cruelle de Vil and the crazy doctor. Didn't have good photos from them, so here are two made by Michel.



The first part went throught the Walt Disney Studios Park. The rain stopped right before the start! Perfect timing! The theme for this race was villains! We had to defeat 21 villains during this race!

First characterstop was Gaston, but we can meet him all the time in the parks, so we skipped him. We later heard that he was switching with Radcliffe with PERCY! We would have definitly stopped for those two.


Loki was there again! But only to make selfies with him from a distance. When we arrived, he was just taking off so the picture completly failed.

 Third stop was Hades with pain and panic! I really wanted to have a picture with them, they're so cool! But the line was very long, and they said they would switch in 10minutes. We didn't got them, we got Kronk and Yzma instead. Still fun, but not as fun as pain and panic...
Kilometer 2 till 4 was mostly backstage or on track of the Sudios Tram Tour attraction.



 Characterstop number 4 was Dr.Facilier, we heard that he switched with captain Hook. We missed him unfortunally.

Characterstop #5: Sheriff of Nottingham and Prince John
After Frontierland we ran through Main Street!


And back to Adventureland, where characterstop #6 was: Jafar! The line wasn't long, I knew Shan-Yu was going to switch with him. But the line moved quicker than we thought, so we had to let a lot of people in front of us. Then we saw Cody, and he joined us in a new line for Shan-Yu. There was another girl who wanted to meet Shan-Yu. We still had to wait a bit. Cody said that Jafar had Iago with him, which was quite special. I didn't even notice that! So I decided I would take a picture with him after all. After that photo we had to wait another 5min, and then Shan-Yu came!

We lost a lot of time waiting for Shan-Yu. I think we were at 1 hour and 10min on course before we saw the 5K mark!
Characterstop #7 was Malificent on the Castle Stage. There was a huge line for her, but we didn't want to wait that long for a 'selfie spot'.
 Characterstop #7 was the Malificent float and her servants, I don't know their names!
 #8 was Lady Tremain, line was too long and we needed to speed up a little bit, because we spent too much time waiting in other lines.


 #9 was Darth Vader!


 So, right after kilometer 7 you will leave Disneyland. After that there aren't anymore characters, and the photopass photographers are only on Disney property, so that's after kilometer 16.








The red flag! No idea why, in the morning it started with yellow, there wasn't any thunder close...













 Sorcerer Mickey was there to congratulate us on defeating 20 villains during our half marathon!
We did it! 36K in three days!


After the half we had to walk back to the Expo to get our Challenge medals. First, they checked on the computer if you have started and finished all races, then we could pass and get our medals! Still missing the photos we made in the Expo on our photopass, I hope they will show up soon.




That was it! Report on all three races! I have to say, my legs felt pretty good after the half marathon on Sunday, I was definitly able to run another day. Not ready to run a marathon quite yet, but I still got 2,5months to get there. And honestly, can you ever be fully prepared for Dopey? ;-)

We took a lot of medal photos in the parks! Something I really missed doing last year.