I figured I'd start this thread off so we don't fill up the weekly training thread with massive posts.

What a great event! By some crazy luck I managed to snag corral A, which meant I was able to elbow my way all the way up to the front about ten yards behind the actual start line. I'll give the start details since I guess I was the only one up that close.

One of the first things they announced was that the field was 62% female, which brought out a big cheer! Unfortunatley they chose to have the start only on the northbound side of Disneyland Drive, heading south. This meant it was only two lanes wide, or about twenty feet. According to the results some people have chip vs clock time differences of over 17 minutes! And some clock times of finishers are over 3:50... Shortly before race time the announcer called Mickey and Minnie up on stage, who were wearing these great blue running outfits, very spiffy. After some one way chat (go figure) he asked them where all their friends they were supposed to bring were, and after some playful searching the horizon, suddenly spotlights lit up the sky where they had just brought in the monorail and parked it right over the start where it crossed the road! At least a dozen characters were all hanging out the windows waving and cheering! Eventually the time had finally come and they began a 10 second countdown. There was a huge arch over the 2 lane road (way too skinny to try to squash 12,500 people through) and bright lights started out at the outside edge and started moving towards the middle as the seconds ticked down.

3... 2... 1.... GO! If you've ever seen the DL fireworks show where they set off flames on the castle, you'll recognize what happened next. Something like 10-15 foot flames came blasting out of the top of the arch, and as far as I know lasted quite some time although I was already past them within several seconds. You could feel the heat as it was only about 15 feet above your head when you ran under. At the same time, they had lined the road with these black boxes, which they constantly warned us to stay away from, and it turned out those blasted tons of confetti and streamers into the air at the same time. I happened to be on the edge so I took some of it in the ear but that just fed my adrenaline.

Official clock vs chip time says it only took me 9 seconds to cross the start line, so I missed out on anything that happened back in the other corrals, (there were 5, A-E). I'll let others who took pictures and weren't spazzing about beating a certain time fill you in on the rest of the course.

I had a pretty good race overall. The good news is no injury, and no specific pain in any muscle other than general soreness in joints today. Hoping I'll be able to get back at it in a couple days, and start training for RftC and RftT which I'm now going to officially register for. And of course the final goal is the DW Full.

So did I go out too fast? Probably... I beat my PR for 10k, cutting over a minute off my time from that hilly course on labor day. I then smashed my PR for 10 miles, cutting over 3 and a half minutes off that!

Unfortunately the race wasn't 10 miles, and I hit the infamous wall right after the stadium. I really hope there weren't any photogs after that point, because I probably looked like the walking dead. My splits (avg was supposed to be 9:10):

8:26, 9:01, 8:40, 8:46, 9:00, 9:07, 9:12, 9:25, 9:40, 9:25, 10:39, 11:12, 12:30, 0:56.

Total time: 2:05:59, 9:36mpm

So no breaking two hours, but a PR by about 80 seconds. How bout that last 5k though eh? Was supposed to be about 28:25, and it was 35:17! I bet we have some full walkers who could have kept up. Congrats to April, looks like she led all WISHers across the finish with a great last 5k, I was ahead of her by like 5 minutes at the stadium and she blew by me and finished 3 minutes ahead. Also congrats to Howard, who as we discovered crossed within a minute or two of myself. And of course congrats to EVERYONE who is sporting some crazy gold bling! (got a ton of questions on the flights home...)

Overall place: 1968, although of the 12,500 runners I have no idea how many finished (edit: looks like 9395 or so according to the official results page). Gender place 1249, and 89th in my division.