Friday morning my mom and I woke up refreshed and decided to hit the expo early. I was so excited when I picked up my race bib and even more excited to see that I was in Corral C! I was dreading being at the very back of the pack.
The expo was packed, but we picked a good time of day to go because we didn't have too much trouble getting around.
There was a really impressive display of running shoes on sale and I ended up getting 2 pairs of Wave Inspires. I know I rhapsodized about my Wave Riders when I got them, but with my leg problems recently I'd been thinking about switching to the Inspires for the extra stability and the sale prices at the expo were just the little nudge I needed! But I really wanted to get this shoe...
There was a lot of really neat stuff at the expo - Bondi Bands, Sweaty Bands, stickers, shirts, running skirts and dresses - but the only other thing I bought was this sticker. I couldn't wait to get home and put it on my car!
After the expo we did a little more outlet shopping, and around 3pm decided we were ready for another try at Harry Potter World. This was a much better time to go than first thing in the morning! It was still crowded, but much less so. The sign posted for waiting time for The Forbidden Journey said 45 minutes, but my mom had scoured the internet the night before for tips on cutting down your wait time and we were ready to try them out. She read something about a "no bag line" for people who didn't need to store their bags that was much shorter, but I think the line was so short at this time of day that the no bag line wasn't really in operation. We did, however, decide to jump in the singles line. Instead of wandering through the greenhouse and several rooms in the castle, we went straight to the place where you board the ride and only had to wait about 10 minutes there! It was so much fun, we rode it 3 times in a row!
We also tried the Strawberry Peanut Butter ice cream at the Three Broomsticks that day, and it was delicious! I may or may not have had 2 servings of it! :)
To end the day, we rode the roller coaster Flight of the Hippogriff. You got to see some really neat things that aren't visible from other parts of the park, like Buckbeak the hippogriff and Hagrid's hut. The ride itself, however, is about 30 seconds long and kind of anti-climactic. Still fun though!
We had another fun-filled day and were ready to crash at the end of it. We wanted to get to sleep early because Mom was walking in the Tangled Royal Family 5K in the morning!
We were up at 5am to board the bus and head over to Epcot for the 5K. We had about a 45 minute wait before Mom lined up at the start and then I sat at the finish line to wait for the finishers. The overall winner was a man who finished around 17:30. The crowd clapped politely and race officials held a ribbon for him to run through, but it was a subdued finish. When the first female finished a couple minutes later, the crowd all got to their feet and cheered and clapped, and a new ribbon was put out for her to run through! It really hit home to me at that moment how focused on women the Princess weekend is and it made me so happy and proud to be there.
Mom finished at a little over 50 minutes and said that she had a great time! I was really proud of her because she's not very fitness focused and she just had major knee surgery 7 months ago. She said now she wants to do more races and maybe even walk in the Princess Half next year! That made me really happy because I love knowing that I've inspired her to be more fit.
We went back to the room after the 5K to wait for Pete to arrive. Once he got there, we took it very easy the rest of the day. We swung by the expo again to pick up his bib and do a little more shopping, and ended the day with dinner at California Pizza Kitchen so that we could have some multigrain pasta to fuel up for the race in the morning!
Bedtime came very early for us, at 9pm. We actually wanted to get to bed a little earlier but got caught in traffic on the way back to the hotel. I was excited for the morning but had no trouble falling asleep! I did, of course, make sure to lay out all my clothes with my race bib pinned on to make things easy when we woke up at 3am!
Only 6 more hours until the half marathon...
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