The Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend Saga

Wow... that's all I can really say about this past weekend. Wow...

Don't worry though, I will be posting full race recaps and give as much detail as I can on how I did as usual. After some thought however, in order to streamline this as much as possible, I felt I should do this post first, explaining some stuff ahead of time and reminding you guys of some other things before diving head first into the details. This way (hopefully) the recaps won't run too long.

The Galloway Method
I think regular readers of this blog are very familiar with this and I have praised the Galloway Method countless times as it has allowed me not only to run long distances but to run them faster. However, other than saying that I do 2:1 intervals (2 minutes running, 1 minute walking) I have never really given any more details on how I do it. It just was not important I guess. Well, it was important for Marathon Weekend. As it turns out, in the run/walk equation, I seem to be seriously lacking in the walking part. 

I'm a slow walker. Some people are very good at walking quickly. Some can even maintain the 16 min/mile minimum pace without running at all and believe me, I saw a lot of people doing it this weekend. Well, I can't do that for whatever reason. If I really focus and hustle, I can get to 18:30 min/mile but I cannot sustain it for too long. For me, anything above 20 min/mile is "fast". 

The Balloon Ladies
Again, something I have talked about several times in this space. In fact, it was a big part of my narrative during the recap for my first marathon (which you can find here). These ladies maintain the 16 min/mile pace after everyone has crossed the start line. If you fall behind them, you will eventually get picked up at one of the many cut off points along the race courses. You end up in a bus and your race is over.

There is plenty of debate on the internet regarding where exactly, the last cut-off point is. In other words, what part of the course do you have to reach in order to avoid being swept even if the "ladies" pass you by. During Marathon Weekend 2014, I was told that if I reached Disney's Hollywood Studios I would be safe and that is what I used as reference. The logic behind it being that once you reach DHS, there are no more public roads that have to opened thus, you are officially safe. Turns out, that is not accurate. In fact, I have to this day not heard any official word from Run Disney regarding this so don't take my word for it but I seemed to have discovered it this past weekend.

Of Finishing and Medals
Which brings me to my brother. If you read my 2014 marathon recap you know who I'm talking about. He signed up for the Half Marathon this year and sadly got swept at mile 8. While I have a nagging feeling he did not train as he should have, we didn't get to find out. He got sick and could not stay out of a port-a-potty long enough to stay ahead of the Balloon Ladies. There is no way I can pass up an opportunity like that. An actual "victim" of the sweep police? You can bet I will post a full interview on what exactly happens. He also shared with me some very interesting perspectives regarding the medal "issue" and what he heard while in the bus back to the parking lot. Some of you might recall I wrote a post about that a while back. Well, I have some new info to share and some of it might surprise you and even shock you.

The Knee
Like you have not heard about this enough already. Even though I will do my best to not mention it during the recaps, it is important to understand that the knee issue figures heavily in this whole story. It's the reason why I could not train properly and therefore why I had such a hard time during Marathon Weekend. 

Tomorrow, we begin our story in earnest. Stay tuned.

Kamikaze WDW - Disney's Hollywood Studios

Here's parts I and II of this trip just in case you want to catch up.

Here's another interesting tidbit from our trip (read the previous post for the first): I've been to Orlando to visit the parks countless times. Of all those times I have been here as "the head of the family" with my daughters three times. Three times and we have visited the same two parks every time. Magic Kingdom and Hollywood Studios. There's a demographics lesson for you. Know your audience folks. Princesses and Disney Junior is where it's at. Hopefully, I'll be able to remedy the fact that my daughters have yet to visit Epcot and Animal Kingdom at some point in the future but for now, we came here for the Frozen Summer of Fun so here we are!

The day started... late. Everyone was pretty tired the night before and I told Mayline to allow the girls to sleep as much as possible so they could rest. These girls... at 5:30am they are usually up and about whether tired or not so I figured that with their level of exhaustion they would sleep all the way to maybe 7:30am but they went past that. Probably for the first time in their lives. After a record-breaking dressing and combing session we swallowed some breakfast and headed for DHS.

We literally walked through the gate to catch the start of the Frozen Royal Welcome parade. The main objective of this day was simple: Catch all the Frozen-related activities happening in the park. So, while late, we were off to a good start. Disney, being well... Disney, made sure to create the proper ambiance for the parade by making it snow along the parade route. You don't see that everyday. Especially during a hot, Florida, summer day.

So that got the girls amped up and after hearing Let It Go for the first time of many this day we headed over to the Animation Courtyard for some character time with some of the girl's big favorites.

This part of the day was Angelica's show by the way. "The Kraken" ran all over the Animation Courtyard leading the way to the characters she wanted pics with, which were all of them. At one point, we saw the line for Doc McStuffins to be shorter than the one for Sophia the First  so we switched. She went ballistic. I would've never guessed that this would be her reaction to the characters. Worst case scenario: she would be afraid. Best case? She would "tolerate" getting her pic taken with them. She ended up the bravest of the three. That's kids for you.

Next off was Olaf's Summer Cooldown over at the Main Stage. Here I made my best Queen Elsa impression.

And here is a tiny Cast Member for your viewing pleasure.

So Elsa can conjure snow flakes. So what? I can conjure cast members... apparently. Olaf's Summer Cooldown is essentially a dance-along and it was pretty fun. We did the Twist, threw around some beach balls and of course endured a rendition of Olaf's Ode to Summer. The streaming jets of cold mist at the end were extremely welcome. It was a pretty hot and humid day. 

I was a bit disappointed by Disney Jr. Live on Stage. Whether because of changes or technical issues, some of the effects on the show were missing and I think it took away from the experience. That didn't stop the girls from enjoying it of course but my gut feeling is that next time we come here, we'll be skipping this one unless they update it with something like Miles from Tomorrowland which is big at my house. Kids grow up. It happens.

Lunch was at Pizza Planet. I was warned that this place looks nothing like it does in the Toy Story films but the girls insisted and I obliged. I tried the Meat Lover's pizza. Nothing to write home about but you know, it's pizza. Can it ever be bad?

From there we did our first round of Star Tours. I say first round because the girls LOVED it so much that we went again later in the day. After all the girly stuff, after all the Princess stuff, after all the Frozen stuff... they are my daughters after all. I was so proud. Of course, that lasted all of 15 seconds. We went straight from Star Tours to the Frozen Sing-along.

This is the "main attraction" if you will, to the whole Frozen Summer of Fun. It is done in the stage where American Idol used to be. Here's the short version: Princess Anna summons Arandelle's official historians to tell the extremely truncated version of the events in the film. Think of the film, take out everything except the songs and you're there. Of course everyone is encouraged to sing along. Do I have to tell you that my girls enjoyed this attraction? Anna and Elsa can pop up a million times and it will never get old for them. Plus, they got to sing their tiny lungs out. My favorite part? When one of the historians mistook Kristoff for Justin Beiber. 

Then came the highlight of the day for me. My friend and coach extraordinaire Katrina Pilkington and her husband Gary drove from Tampa (she'll soon be moving to Las Vegas) to meet us at the park. It was absolutely amazing to finally meet someone who has inspired and motivated me so much in person. As much as I loved meeting you Kat, hopefully you'll get to see less of me next time we meet. Wink wink. By the way, Mayline thought you were taller. That's what happens when you have a bigger than life personality.

Mini-Coach Summit

Fast Passes for Toy Story Mania were waiting for us and we knew from previous experience this was a favorite for the girls. The best part here was when they all decided they had beaten my score by combining everyone else's so I guess I was the loser.

Which brings me to another attraction I was sad to see not working properly. Voyage of The Little Mermaid was missing all of the water effects. Again, maybe it was just broken but this and Disney Jr. Live on Stage were reminders that DHS is a park in a state of transition. There are big things coming here and the Frozen stuff is basically masking all that has been closed. Hollywood Studios has always been one of my favorite parks and I can't wait to see it 100% functional again.

We also ran into Minnie Mouse all dressed up for beach summer fun and dancing the afternoon away! Veronica and Maria did not want to dance with her for some reason but guess who was total game for this? Oh yeah. Time to "release The Kraken!"

This brings us to the low point of the day which I know sounds bad. It wasn't too bad I guess but sometimes, especially with kids, the only way to know you're gonna get burned is to put your finger in the fire.

Oh, the two oldest were gonna scream for real in a bit

The two older girls wanted to ride The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. I was hesitant but they insisted. I explained what the ride was and how it worked. As we walked up to it I pointed at the fact that people were screaming inside the building. They bravely kept walking. A part of me thought: "well, they loved the Mine Train and they went crazy for Star Tours so maybe this was not gonna be so bad." Well, that part of me was wrong. As soon as the ride was over, Maria was trembling in terror (how fitting) and Veronica was outright crying. It took a lot of soothing to calm them down. Yeah, they're not gonna be riding this one anytime soon. To this day, The Tower of Terror is a touchy subject around our house, so don't bring it up. Me? Some of you may know that Tower of Terror is programmed to act differently every time and this particular turn was my favorite ever. It was the first time I felt truly weightless while riding it. Which is probably what scared the girls more than anything.

We are in the last row. The very last girl on the left, screaming and crying and laughing nervously is Veronica, then my Mom looking amused at her reaction followed by Maria, holding on for dear life. Quite the scene.

Fearing some permanent damage, we quickly went back to Star Tours for some badly needed happy memories. Did I mention how happy it makes me that they love this ride so much? 

After that we had dinner at ABC Commissary where everyone had Cheeseburgers except me, who was feeling adventurous and tried the steak. It needed a bit of salt but otherwise it was pretty good. ABC Commissary actually has a pretty decent and varied menu. I have tried different dishes here over the years and have always been happy. Definitely recommend this one if you are looking for Quick Service option in DHS. Quick side note: For the sake of order and peace, I sat everyone down and went to order by myself. The order was too big for me to handle and just when I resigned myself to doing two trips, the Cast 
Member who gave me the food happily offered to help me carry the trays to our table even though it was not his job. This is a Quick Service restaurant after all but that's Cast Members for you.

It was during dinner that it started to rain. Really hard. Thunder, lightning... it was pretty bad. it was at this time that I started fearing that we were gonna miss Fantasmic! and the Frozen Fireworks Show. Or rather, that it was not gonna happen at all. And basically, that's how our day ended. After a couple of hours of waiting it became evident that the rain and lightning was not gonna let up and my brother reluctantly went out in the rain and bought some ponchos, which did almost nothing because it was raining so hard and we ran to the buses and eventually our room. 

And so it was over. We almost got to do everything we set out to do. We missed Fantasmic! and the Frozen Fireworks although it was not our fault and we didn't get to see Frozen Fever which was no biggie as we had seen it when we saw Cinderella at the Theater. Everything else we had set out to do in this Kamikaze trip to Disney World, we accomplished. Oh yeah, I would have loved to catch Indiana Jones Epic Stunt Spectacular one more time since it's scheduled to close but that was a personal thing so it was never part of the official schedule. No joke, it took me about a week and a half to get rid of the felling of exhaustion after we returned home. It was just so crazy but looking back I wouldn't have done it differently. We made some wonderful memories on this trip and the girls... The girls are still talking about it weeks later. Sometimes, I'll be driving them to school and they'll ask me if we can talk about the trip. Tower of Terror and all. 

Yup, I'd say it was worth it for sure.

Kamikaze WDW - Escape from Puerto Rico

We survived. 

It was crazy, just as I knew it would be. In fact, it was even crazier thanks in no small part to Tropical Storm Erika and her extremely erratic behavior but we accomplished all the stuff we set out to do except one thing (I'll get to that) and had a whole lot of fun in the process.

There's a Storm Brewing...

I had been standing watch since the previous week and saw it coming from miles away but in the end I was still helpless to do anything about it. Everyone was forecasting for Erika to be right over the island in the early hours on Friday. Our tickets to Orlando? Yup, they were for 5am Friday. As early as Tuesday, I began calling Jet Blue asking about what was gonna happen and their answer was the same on Tuesday and Wednesday: The flight was scheduled to leave on time and if I wanted to make any changes it would be about 700 dollars extra. I tried to explain my situation and that if my flight was canceled, I could not pick a later flight because I would lose my reservations, tickets and everything else but Jet Blue would not budge.

Finally, Puerto Rico issued instructions closing some schools and government functions on Wednesday night at about 11pm. This thing was coming for sure and Jet Blue was still adamant that my flight was leaving on time. On Thursday morning, I found out that they decided to include my girl's school as one to close so, with two of my girls in tow, I left for work resigned to the fact that we were probably gonna miss our flight. Then, just as I was parking at work, Jet Blue issued the code to change flights and I was forced to look for alternatives right then and there. Sure enough, our only choice was a flight at 1:40pm that very day so I set it up, signed off on some stuff at work, got the kids back in the car and headed home.

I don't think I have ever packed a suitcase as fast as I did for this. It was a madhouse. The girls were screaming all over the house because we were leaving for Disney World while me and the wife were trying to figure out what we were leaving out. Most of the packing was in order but when you're in a hurry, that nagging feeling that you are leaving something out is inescapable. More than leaving, we felt like we were evacuating. With me still in my work clothes and the girls still in their school uniforms, we headed to the airport.

Thankfully, from this point on things slowed down a bit. We got to the airport and checked in and despite my wife having some issues with security - They weren't accepting her type of I.D. anymore- we made it to the gate on time and had a chance to actually breathe for a minute before getting in the plane and heading for Florida.

In terms of pure nerves, this was the worst part of the trip. Things got a whole lot more fun from that point on, but not any less hectic. We had a very, very full schedule ahead of us so things were just beginning.

We made it!! In our school clothes but we made it.

Planning is a... you know.

Less than two weeks from now, I'm heading to Disney World for our two-day Kamikaze incursion into Frozenland. Otherwise known as Disney's Hollywood Studios. Things have evolved a bit since the last time I wrote about this. We have decided to go all in on this and will head over to The Magic Kingdom as soon as we land on Friday, making an already crazy trip even crazier. Why? Because as I was planning this debacle of a trip, I realized that for all the Frozen fun to be had at Hollywood Studios, there was no way to actually take a picture with either Anna or Elsa there. To do that you have to head on over next door to the Happiest Place on Earth, where both characters are waiting for you with open arms at Princess Fairytale Hall. Provided you wait in line for a million hours or something like that. Oh, there's a FastPass, but those were long gone by the time I tried to grab one.

I really don't know what's more difficult: Planning a long Disney trip (like a week or more) or a quick one like this. I'm starting to think it's the latter but that may be because I'm right in the middle of it all. The fundamental problem with planning a Disney trip -long or short- has always been that there is simply way too much to do. Initially, I thought that since the main focus of the trip is Frozen, then it was just a matter of picking those things and forgetting the rest to survive. Not true. Along with the Frozen activities -which are at specific times so you must work around them- there are several "classics" that the girls will not want to miss. Can I go to DHS and not catch Disney Jr. Live on Stage? Not if I don't want a full-blown mutiny. Can I say "not today" to Toy Story Mania? The girls have already made it very clear we have to do that one.

And with 3 small girls, there are so many other things to consider... Have you ever done a seating chart for a Disney trip? I have. Yes, a seating chart. My Mom will be joining us at the parks and with that comes the dreaded problem: Who sits next to grandma? So I have it broken down by ride. On the ones that are two people per seat like Dumbo or Toy Story Mania, I have a chart of who sits with who so everyone gets a turn to sit next to Grandma on a ride. This was pre-negotiated with the girls so they already know who goes where ahead of time.

I am currently working on the Aircraft boarding and traveling procedure. The plane we are taking to Orlando is 2 seats, the ailse, then 2 seats. Not enough room for a family of 5 to seat together. Mayline has to care for the youngest first so they sit together while I'm one seat in front. This leaves the older girls (insert Psycho theme here) alone together across the ailse. Not only that, but because we are waking up so early and have such a full schedule once we are there, I have to figure out a way to make 3 very excited little girls to sleep on the plane. So I have been talking to them about it for a while now about what's gonna happen at the airport and especially while on the plane. Wish me luck.

This is the sort of thing I've been dealing with recently, and I realize this sounds a bit extreme but there are a couple of million things out of my control that can and will go wrong so I'm just trying to deal with the stuff I can control. The schedule is tight and there's no need to screw things up because of something I could have done something about.

In the meantime, I have a race on Sunday: Popular Bank's 5K and my first race since the Puerto Rico Half Marathon back in March. I have done this race every year since 2012 and a PR is long overdue at this distance.

To Goofy or not to Goofy... that is the question

Choices have to be made. Oh, the horror...

As I have posted several times, I would like to do the Goofy Challenge in 2016. As early as this time last year, I made it very clear that the Goofy Challenge was in my list of long term goals and that 2016 was the year to do it. You might also remember that after tackling the Disney Marathon without my wife and daughters, I vowed that my next runDisney experience would include them for sure. Next April, Marathon Weekend registration goes on sale and everything is going according to plan. Except for one thing.

My family doesn't want to go.

No, they are not insane. No, really. And it's not that they don't want to go perse. There is a perfectly good reason for this turn of events and while I kind of understand, I'm still kind of shocked a little bit. My daughters are not only Disney fans through and through, but HUGE Frozen fans so you would expect them to be ecstatic at the prospect of going to Disney World, especially with all the Frozen stuff happening at the parks. But no. Given the choice, they want to do something else. They want to go on a Disney cruise.

Let's go back a bit. We were having a family conversation about how much fun we were gonna have when Daddy would finally take everyone with him to Disney World when the subject of the Disney cruise came up. We went on the Disney Fantasy in November 2012 and had one of the best vacations I've ever had and THE best family vacation ever by far on that cruise. Not to mention I ran my first Disney race there (Castaway Cay 5K) which quite literally started this whole running journey. The girls were raving about how much fun it was and that they wanted to go again.

My daughters came up with the brilliant idea of going to the parks AND the cruise. My wallet complained before I did. "Girls, I know you guys love the cruise but we can't do both. No way."

- "But we want to go!"

- "Sorry, but we can only do one or the other.

This is where I totally misread my daughters. And my wife, I might add. I mean, I was thinking Parks, Castle, Princesses, Frozen... they would take the bait for sure.

- "So choose. What would you do. The cruise, or the Parks?"

Yeah, that was the wrong question. My oldest and my wife (the traitors) blurted out "Cruise!" in less than a second. Veronica, the middle one, was conflicted. She still wanted to have her cake and eat it too. But with some reluctance said "Parks!" after asking many, many times why we just could not do both. But her answer was not firm. After some prodding from her sister she went with cruise as well.

I understand my wife's choice on this. She hasn't stopped talking about the cruise since we got off the ship, even now over two years later. She is also worried about going to the parks during a race. She doesn't speak any English and the prospect of spending  a day (Marathon)and a half(Half Marathon) alone with three kids in a place she is not familiar with while I'm running scares her a bit. So given a choice, she took the safe bet.

The girls on the other hand, I would have not guessed. I underestimated how much fun they had on the cruise. They have been to the parks but the cruise was more recent so maybe that weighs heavily on their choice too.

So, this is what I'm left with. If I want to do this race, I would have to do it on the ultra-cheap. My brother is living in Miami and has a time share in Orlando so he would provide both lodging and transportation for free(maybe even do the Half with me if I can convince him). I can use my accumulated airfare points for the plane ticket so I would just need to pay race registration and spending money for the weekend. No parks, no resorts, no extra days. Arrive on Friday, leave on Sunday or Monday. Sounds horrible I guess, but it's doable. I'm there to accomplish a goal after all. The other stuff is just extra. Then, in November go have the time of our lives on the cruise.

That, or do the Goofy Challenge on some other year...

Meanwhile, negotiations continue at the Pizarro household to see if some alternative agreement can be reached. The one thing that is not negotiable is for me to simply say that we are going and have them feel like they were forced to go. That sounds so weird. Who would need to be forced to go to Disney World?! Well, apparently people set on taking another Disney cruise.

Guys, I'm all ears (or eyes). What do you think? There's no hurry (yet). Registration starts in April so there is time to think about it.

So, what have I been up to?

I did something. I don't know what. But I can't log my workouts on Dailymile -or any other place that is not Garmin Connect for that matter- anymore.

For a while now I have been searching for a solution but ever since Garmin made a major update to their site and overall software to bring in their latest and greatest watches, I can't log my workout outside of their site. What's worse, it seems to be a problem with my model of GPS watch (FR 410) which kind of gives me the impression that they have stopped supporting the watch altogether. I could be wrong. It could be that I just haven't figured it out but I switched computers recently and took the opportunity to do a clean install of everything needed to make the watch work and still, no dice.

So, if you are my friend in Dailymile and you read that I haven't done any running in three months, it's a lie! Nothing wrong with Garmin Connect and I love the new interface and tools but I like the social aspect of Dailymile better and I kind of miss it. 

In other news...

While it hasn't been three moths since my last run obviously, I did take a small break, if you can call it that. A week after the Philly Half, I did a 3 mile run where my knee exploded in pain. I limped the entire first mile. It got better after that but it reminded me that I still had some healing to do so I decided to not run for a week or two and let the knee do it's thing. The problem with taking a "training vacation" is that all those things you had pending because you were training, are now in your face ready to be done. Oh, and your spouse is more than happy to remind you of all the stuff that has to get done, "you know honey, since you're not running..."

So the last 3 weeks, amidst all the Christmas shopping and decorating, I have been battling with the roof of our home, applying sealant to it so it hopefully won't leak. Hasn't been easy. Ironically, I pulled a hamstring while doing it. I can do that while training you know? 

Before

After

We also put the tree up of course!

So the roof is fixed, so now we can paint inside. Our daughter's rooms needed it pretty badly as the paint was literally falling off the ceiling because of the leaks. And, since we were in there, Veronica, the middle child, needed her bed to be converted from toddler bed to twin as she hardly fit in there anymore. And well, since we had to do all that, why not make it over altogether...

Right before starting the job

Check out the ceiling. Yuck!

Sometimes, I even amaze myself. It took two days, but we went from "Princess Room" to "Anna and Elsa Wonderland". (Emphasis on Anna) We still had some things to do when I shot this video but you get the idea.

My daughter, is ecstatic. She can't stop talking about how happy she is with her new bed and room. Seriously, we can't get her to shut up. And the oldest is now complaining about when will I paint her room (emphasis on Elsa) so still not out of the dog house but still, it was nice to see her reaction. All I gotta say is, I hope this Frozen thing lasts a lot longer because after I do my oldest daughter's room I am not doing one of these again for a while.

The good news is that the time spent "resting" seems to have been for the better. The knee feels OK and I will probably be up and running this week. it doesn't hurt when I bend it anymore but it does still hurt when I crouch (as I painfully found out on the roof).

Next, I will post my end of the year recap. It's been pretty interesting to put that one together. After all, it turns out it was a pretty interesting year. Stay tuned.