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2006 Disneyland Half Marathon Report: David Yung
My wife and I did not arrive in Anaheim until late Saturday afternoon. After checking into the hotel, we hopped onto one of the ART shuttles. It was almost 6:30pm by the time we arrived at the expo (1/2 hour before they closed). I was surprised that there was quite a few people still inside. After I picked up my bib number and tech shirt, I went to the merchandise area. There wasn’t any line up. It was a rather small place compared to other expos. I didn’t buy anything because nothing interested me. We strolled around for another 20 minutes and came across one of the vendors selling “The Stick”. I always wanted one, so finally ended up buying it. It was a bit expensive, but I have to tell you that it really works for me. We ate at one of the restaurants across from our hotel, went back to our room and hit the sack just before 10pm.
I don’t have any pre-race jitters, so I slept soundly. I guess the only jitters I have is when I feel like peeing during a race and no porta-pottie in sight, I have to scout around for a place to go.
Wake up call at 3:30am. Organizers wanted us there at 4:30am. Over my dead body I would do that. I arrived at Downtown Disney shortly after 5am. Somehow I missed the green lotus fountain, so I couldn’t meet up with Dennis and Deb (LA Roadrunners). I thought I would have plenty of time getting into my corral, so I didn’t start going towards the corrals until 5:30. I was assigned to corral C but by the time I got close to corral C, they told me that it was closed and directed me to corral D instead. To be honest, corral C, corral D, who cares! I wasn’t there to run a PR. So when the gun sounded, it took me about 15 minutes to pass the start line after giving high fives to both Mickey and Minnie. It was nice to see Dennis ringing the cowbell in the dark shortly after the start line.
I had a fun time during the run. It has been over 20 years since I stepped foot inside Disneyland. I had a little mishap at mile 7.5 though and wasted a good 15 minutes. What a klutz I was! I actually stumbled and fell when I tripped across a railway and lacerated both my knees, elbows and my left palm. I was holding my camera in my left hand and luckily I did not break it. Now I felt gross with all the dirt and sand on my open wounds. I needed to locate a medical tent. Luckily, I found one ½ mile down the road. There were 4 volunteers there, two were attending to 2 runners, and the other two were taking notes. I was there for over 5 minutes and no one paid any attention to me, amazingly. I finally yelled out, “Can someone take a look at my wounds please!” The volunteer took her time to cleanse one of my wounds (over 10 minutes). I told her that it was taking too long. I figured that it would take her at least ½ hr to cleanse all my wounds. I told her I am a nurse and just gave me the hydrogen peroxide and gauze so I could do it myself. One wipe, two wipe, three wipe and I was out of the tent. Up until now, I am still wondering if it was the female runner with the spaghetti straps and bikini type shorts in front of me causing me to fall. Hence 15 minutes were lost.
The highlight of the run was when I sat in the Angels dugout and had my picture taken. I saw Dennis one more time at around mile 11, I think. I passed the finished line at 2:49, not bad considering my long stop to take care of the wounds and the many times I stopped to take pictures. Amazingly I didn’t have to pee for the whole 13 miles.
I lined up for about 30 minutes to have my finisher picture taken, grabbed some food and was finally out of the area looking for the right shuttle to take us back to the hotel. After showering and attending to my wounds, we drove to Jolly Roger and met up with Melissa, Dennis, Albert and Don and their families. It was nice meeting them all. Sorry guys for being late.
Overall, I truly enjoyed the run. Two things to complain though. There wasn't any Powerade station until mile 7. Luckily, I had a couple of e-caps with me. Also, with 12,000 runners, they only had 4 picture taking stations. They need more!. Here are some of the photos I snapped during the race. Hope you enjoy them.
I am the one with the grey shirt and sunglasses in the middle.
Here comes Dennis ringing the cowbell in the dark!
My right knee was still bleeding from the fall earlier!
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