My First (Virtual) Half Marathon

My sister and I completed our first Half Marathon this past weekend! Ready for a race recap?

I have done a Tough Mudder, a few Color Runs, and a fundraising walk, but I have always wanted to do a Disney race. Unfortunately, I never had the extra money to purchase race tickets, flights to and from Florida, and hotel accommodations. Then the Covid-19 Pandemic happened and I was able to participate in their Disney Princess Half Marathon virtually! You can recap on the virtual Disney 5k on this blog.

What is a virtual race?

It's exactly what it sounds like! You complete the race virtually on your own time. For RunDisney events it's on the honor system and you can choose your own route. We chose a local loop that gave us plenty of distance. The race is supposed to be completed in February but we completed ours in June because of the better weather.

Where did we complete our race?

The route followed a river on one side and a creek on the other. It started as an unpaved path but after a few miles turned to asphalt. It also went through part of town at one point so we were going by shops and restaurants and decked out in our running belts.

Did you run the whole thing?

Full disclosure, we spent A LOT of time walking. My sister is not a runner and I was lucky she was crazy enough to want to even walk this half marathon with me. So I have no complaints. I would like to run a half marathon...or, who am I kidding...at least run a little more next time. The walking let us take plenty of photos.

We also made sure to take a photo at specific mile markers. Disney sends its virtual runners a virtual race pack that includes mile markers for you to put up along your route. It was so much fun to pull out the mile marker and take a quick photo.

Here we are cheesing at Mile 3.

And Mile 5.

The weather was perfect. Not too hot but not too cold. Overall it was so much fun to do this with my sister. Maybe I'll work up to a marathon at some point! We started off in the morning with light sweatshirts but by mile 5 the sun was fully out and it was starting to warm up.

Even at Mile 10 we were still in good spirits and having fun. We were listening to Disney hits on Spotify to pass the time and the weather had gotten so much warmer. We also had our "race snack" bananas during this mile.

But nothing compared to finally being able to put our medals on after hitting 13.1!

I had over 32,000 steps by the end of the day! 

I am still hoping to complete a Disney race in person one day. Maybe when covid is over and I am comfortable around crowds again. I would absolutely love to see the characters on the race route and run through all of the parks in a marathon. It's on my bucket list for sure!