Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend - the Race!

Once we'd taken care of all our shopping, we headed back to our room to get some rest and then get ready for the race. After a good nap for both of us, we got into our race gear and headed over to the Hollywood Studios for the race!

There was a great crowd there and some awesome (and not so awesome as well) costumes to check out! We checked our gear bag and then walked around a bit and did some stretching to get warmed up. There were a ton of port-a-potties, which you really appreciate in that situation! After awhile, it was time to go to our corral and we headed over to get a good spot. Of course, 15 minutes later, I had to go to the bathroom again, so back we went - and this time there was a huge line! Luckily, it went quickly and then back to our corral we went. Not long after getting back, they starting herding all the corrals towards the start line. We walked for awhile to get there, which also helped with the warm up, and we got to see the corrals ahead of us get sent off for the race. They sent us off in style, with fireworks and countdowns for every corral.

This race was not easy for me. Obviously, 10 miles is not very easy but I'd been training and had done an 8.7 mile a couple of weeks before the race. What I didn't count on was the Florida humidity (even at 10p) and how tired my legs would be after walking miles and miles at all of the parks - oops. But! We did it. We got through it and we finished it together (even though I had to stop for potty breaks twice!). It was a fun race - they had villains at each mile, with photo ops and dj's . We decided not to stop for villain pictures - mainly because all of the good ones had a huge line of people waiting. My favorite part was running through the baseball stadium at Wide World of Sports. They had a Tesla coil in the middle and baseball player uniforms set up all around the field as if they'd been in the middle of playing when this crazy machine showed up and "disappeared" all the players. It was really cool - so of course, I forgot to take a picture. Too busy checking it out!

Not long after seeing Malificent doing her thing (picture above), we ran into Hollywood Studios and finished the race. It was an awesome feeling :) This was the longest distance I've ever done and to top it off, they gave us an awesome medal!

We did it!

and we're tired...

but happy!

After the race, they kept the park open for us until 4a, with some of the rides open as well. Our original plan was to take advantage of this and stay until they kicked us out - but, that plan changed. We were just wiped out. Instead, we each got a burger and fries and then headed back to our hotel to get a couple of hours of sleep before our flights out on Sunday. My flight was at 10, so I needed to leave the resort at 7 (which meant being at the bus stop at 6:45...).

We got back to our room at about 3a and I think I was in bed at about 3:30 - so I got a good 2.5 hours of sleep before I had to get up and get ready. My flight out on Sunday was just as good - left on time and got into RDU early. I hope every flight I take from here on out is like this!!

I had a whole lot of fun at this race and I really enjoyed spending this time with my sister. I hope we can do this again :)

Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend - Friday night and the Expo!

We decided to take another stroll around the Food and Wine Festival back at Epcot, but before we did, we rode Spaceship Earth. This ride has changed since the last time I rode it and the end was quite entertaining. When starting the ride, they take your picture which they use later to show you your "future self" after you answer a bunch of questions about your preferred future travel methods and leisure activities. It was a lot of fun :) Cara and I are going to fly our future hovercraft to various and sundry destinations and spend quite a lot of time scuba diving, as you can see in our future self portraits:

Just cruising in our hovercraft

And hanging out underwater

We had more delicious food that night, including another shrimp taco (didn't get enough of those Thursday night!) - we debated the Tequila Flight, but considering our race was the next day, we passed. We tried a kimchi hot dog, which I actually enjoyed a lot and I had a lobster roll that was fantastic. But, my favorite thing that night was grilled cheese with honey and pistachios from Greece. This wasn't a sandwich or anything - just a lovely chunk of cheese griddled and smothered with honey and pistachios - heaven! For dessert, I tried some Belgian truffles - but I should have done the frozen s'mores again. Cara got a chocolate belgian waffle that looked divine.

We decided to go back to the hotel a little early this night to rest up for the race the next day. On Saturday morning, we got up and had a little breakfast in our room (I had a yummy cheese danish I'd picked up at Downtown Disney Thursday evening) and then we went over to the Expo to check out all the goodies and to pick up our race packets. They had some great stuff at the Expo and I was able to pick up a couple of shirts and some compression socks for the next day.

the Expo!

After the Expo, we went back to Downtown Disney to do lunch and some shopping :-) We ate at the T-Rex restaurant and had some nachos and this fantastic chicken sandwich that had pizza dough for bread. The T-Rex restaurant was so fun. We ate at the "ice" bar in front of a huge fish tank and about every 20 minutes a meteor shower would hit the restaurant and all the animatronic dinos would go nuts. It was awesome!

Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend - Friday

On Friday morning, we woke up, got ready in our room (we stayed at the All Star Sports Resort) and then headed right out to Animal Kingdom. Neither one of us are good about sleeping in, so we were out and about and at the park right at 9a, which was nice - we had no wait time for Expedition Everest! This ride was awesome - lots of fun and pretty smooth, which was nice.

On our way to Expedition Everest!

We then headed over to ride the Safari ride. I loved this ride - I had a hard time remembering what it was like until we were finally going, but it came back to me. They have all kinds of animals and I love how open and free this preserve is. We got some great pictures:

A "bloat" of hippos

Giraffes!

I loved the elephants - and I'm pretty sure this one had just finished a trip to the bathroom...

We grabbed some "breakfast" while we were here as well:

And then we headed over to Magic Kingdom! We rode the monorail over from Epcot (we took a bus from Animal Kingdom to Epcot), which is one of my favorite things about Disneyworld. I wish they would build a monorail system everywhere! Once in the Magic Kingdom, we decided to head on over to "Be Our Guest" for lunch, as we knew it was pretty popular and there's usually a wait. We got in line, but got lucky - we only waited about 15-20 minutes before we had ordered and were sitting down waiting on our lunch. The restaurant is in Beast's castle and it's just beautiful. I decided to have the Croque Monsieur with french fries for lunch, with a chocolate cream puff for dessert and Cara had the carved roast beef sandwich with horseradish sour cream and fries, as well as the Master's cupcake - featuring the "grey stuff" as it's icing.  We quickly decided to split our meals so we could get a taste of everything! It was FANTASTIC! They even had homemade mayo for our fries!! (Those of you who don't eat mayonnaise with your fries are seriously missing out, just FYI.) The sandwiches were delicious and filled us right up - it was a good thing we had a small breakfast ;-). I would definitely eat here again - not only was the food scrumptious, but the price was great and the atmosphere was so neat.

Waiting in line!

Stained glass window

Belle and the Beast dancing in our dining room (and a little bit of Cara's head)

My fantastic sandwich (with gooey, melty Gruyere cheese!)

After our fantastic lunch, we decided we should probably walk around a bit and take advantage of a slower ride or two before jumping on any roller coasters. We strolled over to Gaston's Tavern to take a peek inside and then on to Ariel's Grotto. This was a nice, relaxing ride with great music - I told Cara I could easily have taken a nap!

My muscles are just as big as Gaston's, yes?

Ariel's castle

The Sea Witch herself

We then headed over to Tomorrowland to jump on Space Mountain, but discovered a little bit of a wait so we grabbed some Fast Pass tickets instead and went to take in the Monster's Inc Laugh Floor show, which was hilarious. After the show, we went to the Buzz Lighyear Space Ranger Spin where I thoroughly kicked Cara's butt. Once I had trounced her and shown my skill as a Galactic Hero, we went back to Space Mountain to use our Fast Pass tickets. It was just as fun as I remember - easily one of my favorites! I screamed my head off - I'm not ashamed of it. When we were done with Space Mountain, we wondered by Rapunzel's tower and then over to the Haunted Mansion - another ride that could double as a nap station!

Galactic Hero - yep, that's me!

Rapunzel's Tower

After the Mansion, we decided we'd pretty much seen all there was to see at the Magic Kingdom and took the monorail over to Epcot to eat some more food!

Tower of Terror 10 Miler Weekend - Thursday

So, it's been a busy few weeks since Cara and I had our Tower of Terror 10 Miler weekend in Orlando and I haven't had any time to update until now! It was fantastic. We had so much fun and let me tell you, Disney really knows how to do their races - and this wasn't even one of their headliners! Now, as I have quite a bit to write about with this trip, I'm going to split this up into a few posts instead of one gigantically long post!

I flew out from RDU on Thursday after Lily and Richard dropped me off at the airport. We took some time to take a few pictures before, of course. This was Lily's first trip inside an airport and she enjoyed taking a look around and checking out the planes.

My flight was both on time and arrived in Orlando early, which was awesome! I met up with Cara and we headed to the hotel to drop off our luggage before catching a bus to Epcot. The Food and Wine Festival was going on at Epcot and I had never been before - it was really fun. There were vendors from all the different countries represented in the World Showcase and we tasted a lot of their food! That night, we tried a steak with truffle butter sauce from Canada (holy cow, literally. This was fantastic!), a shrimp taco from Mexico (also fantastic), some sushi from Japan (Cara got this chicken hand roll that was so delicious - it came with this wonderful teriyaki sauce) and a blue cheese souffle and cheese plate from France. The souffle was pretty good, but so rich that we couldn't eat more than a few bites. And for dessert - frozen s'mores! Now, before you think "woah, that's a lot of food" keep in mind that these were all sampler portions, so we weren't (quite) as piggie as you might think :-).

Holding up the big ball - yes, I'm that nerd.

After our delicious sushi from Japan!

After Epcot, we headed over to Downtown Disney for some window shopping. We walked through the Disney Boardwalk resort - I've never seen it before and it was really beautiful. We didn't stay long at Downtown Disney Thursday night before heading back to our resort to catch some sleep before our big park day on Friday.

The Lego dragon at Downtown Disney

Tomorrow!!

Tomorrow I head to Disney World to run the Tower of Terror 10 miler with my sister!!! I can't wait to have this getaway - even though I know I'm going to miss my peanut pie so much (and the hubs too!). This will be the longest I've ever been away from her, but I'm sure the time will fly - after all, we'll be at the happiest place on earth! I'll write a recap of the race and our trip as soon as I'm home and recovered from running it :). Here's my costume for the race again - I'm going to be Scar and Cara is going to be the Sea Witch and we'll both be wearing our super comfy Sparkle Skirts!