Expedition Everest: The Race

I had been looking forward to this race for 5 months. . . then it was finally here! and now it's over. But that's ok, b/c yall get to relive it with me.

My first night race.

We got there at the early time of 7:30pm for a 9:30pm start. During training, we noticed neither of us were warmed up enough until a mile or so in, so we wanted to warm up properly. Not that it was needed. We had never trained in anything above 70 degrees and Florida didn't get anywhere near that cool while we were there. I was nice and sweaty before we even started.

Our costumes:

Can you see our team name in the graffiti? :)

No one knew who we were. I didn't realize Chip-n-Dale Rescue Rangers was that obscure. Oh well. It was fun and I got another sparkle skirt out of the deal! Even though, that hat, fur collar and hoodie were hot! It was totally worth it.

I'm still in shock over how unorganized the race was, especially after the way marathon weekend runs so smoothly. There were no set corrals. They just announced which wave was going and which wave needed to be lining up in the running chute (much like all of Disney's other 5ks). They didn't ask for a time when I registered, so I don't know how they came up with the wave plan. We had planned and trained to walk around a 13-14 minute mile. We couldn't get that fast with all the slower walkers, so we just went with the flow and there was nothing to worry about. We never saw sweepers. I don't think it mattered since the race was contained in the park area.

I get that it was hard to have a fun 3 mile course through a park. The 1st mile was entirely in the parking lot and there was a lot of going in and out of backstage. But there has to be a better way to put on the scavenger hunt. Running through the dark is hard enough as it is, doing that and dodging people who are scavenger hunting already/ still running the race is even harder. There were tons of places the course narrowed and there was foot traffic going both ways.  If there ever was a race to be fully aware of your surroundings, this was definitely it. 

I really hope they work these kinks out, because the race has tons of potential. With that being said, ready for some bad night pictures to go with the race? :-) 

"That better not be real" -B as we came up to it. 

Let's just be honest, it's Florida. It was a possibility.

 Obstacle 1: Hay-bales. 

It was very easy to go around if you didn't want to do any of the obstacles.

 Mile 1.5: The park entrance!

A thinned very well lit area of the crowd.

 The only characters on the course and you couldn't take pictures with them.

By the time we got to the after party, Mickey and Minnie were gone, too. Boo.

 Obstacle 2: Tires.

 Castasaurus.

The backstage of Restaurantasaurus, which means we are almost done!

Obstacle 3: Crawl under a net.

Yea. That didn't happen.

Next up: The Scavenger Hunt!