Disney Marathon Trip: Day 1: Epic Fail

This morning Sister and I got up and headed out to try to find some Starbucks.  That turned into an ordeal.  We went to a place inside a hotel and placed our order, they started making the drinks and then I went to pay with my Starbucks card (the only thing I brought) and was told “they don’t take those”.  Um, Ok, then I cannot pay you… so we were told to walk another ¼ mile down the road to find an actual store which we luckily did and the whole order ended up being about $2 less than it would have been in the fauxbux.  Fail #1 of the day…

After coffee, we got showered and tried to eat breakfast only to realize we had not really packed enough substantial food choices because we thought we would be a little closer to places but no… so mom ran to a Publix and picked up a few things so we could all eat.  After this ordeal, we walked over to Universal Studios thinking it was not going to be THAT busy today since it is a Thursday and all… turned out we were WRONG!  This place was a zoo!  I think the main reason it felt so congested was because it is super small!  Everything about it is tiny!  All the stores in HP world were similar to the size of stores you would really find in London but the problem is, those do not normally hold thousands of people… you actually had to wait an hour to get into the wand store and 2 hours to ride the ride… we decided to wait for the ride but pass on most of the stores because seriously?!?

We tried some Pumpkin Juice ($6) and it was good but we realized rather expensive for juice…In total, we ended up spending about 4-5 hours at the park which was plenty for us because of the crowd level but still at least got to see the Harry World.  (We also had a hard time finding food here… we ended up with Turkey legs and popcorn – healthy!)

After giving up at HP world, we drove to try to find a grocery store to get some food for the next few days.  We first stopped and Goodings.  Well, note to self, apparently they feel it a good idea to charge twice the price of a normal grocery store.  OK, lesson learned – never shop at Goodings even though they are “Open 24 hours!”  So we searched out a trusty Walmart SuperCenter and got everything we need (and probably more) for about $80!  Perfect!  We are well stocked with cereal, fruit, meat and cheese and crackers now

After that whole little ordeal, we went to check into our Disney hotel, Port Orleans – French Quarter.  So Stinking cute!  We actually didn’t have any issues with this process, which might be the highlight of the day in that regard!  After checking in, we brought up our luggage and hung out a bit and then went off to try to find the race expo.

Race Expo=Epic Fail.  I really thought it was supposed to be in Downtown Disney so we took the little water shuttle from our hotel down there.  Once we got down there, we walked around a bit, found BabyCakes!! Bakery and got some snacks and then asked about the ESPN Wide World of Sports.  Um, yeah, apparently this is really far away… oops.  Another Epic Fail for the day… But BabyCakes was pretty good!  Especially the donuts

So we decided to grab some dinner.  Asked at Portobello’s Italian Restaurant if they have gluten free pasta and received a Yup!  So we sat down.  Only to realize it was really expensive but sister and I decided to just get chicken cesar salads and mom a pizza so it would not be too bad.  Our food came out pretty quick and we started eating away.  Then sister and I made a discovery… apparently someone thought when we asked for them to be GLUTEN FREE and with NO CRUTONS that it meant they could put the croutons on and then pick them off leaving the crumbs behind… excellent.  Needless to say, we did not pay for that meal and were apologized to by the manager.  He did seem to want to make it better but unfortunately sir, unless you can figure out how to make my stomach not hurt, you are out of luck… he also really wanted us to stay and eat anyways.  Um, yeah, probably not going to happen now that I am going to feel pretty off for the next 3 days if I did eat any crumbs… oh well, Saturday running ought to go well??!?? Or not… Worst Epic Fail of the day…

So after that whole debacle, we left and just decided to brave Magic Kingdom for a bit.  We were not going to go here but adding another day to our park tickets was a whole $8 so we figured it was worth it.  And it was nice to see the castle at night all lit up.  We tried to go to Space Mountain also but were told the “Ride was having technical difficulties” excellent again. And another Epic Fail.  So we watched the Electrosomethingorother parade from afar and then just headed back to our hotel for the night.  We were all pretty tired and our legs were sore and it’s only day one and we are supposed to run 13.1 miles on Saturday!  What?!?  All in all, this day was just weird and hopefully it can turn around from here on out!

Shake it up.

I apologize in advance for the lack of pictures and interesting content on this post.  I am tired.  Boo hoo I know…

Normally on Thursday’s I run in the morning and do Body Pump after work.  Today I decided to do them both back to back.  All I can say is oof da!  But it really reminded me I am NOT an evening running, I am a morning runner.  I don’t know what it is about me that makes it so much more painful to run in the afternoon.  I get a side stitch and just want to lie down and take a nap  But regardless of how bad I was whining, I still made my 3 miles of tempo plus warm up/cool down plus some because apparently maps and me don’t get along… I wanted to make the entire loop 3.7 miles to give me time before Body Pump but ended up getting a route that was 4.2 miles… oops!  So instead I had to rush around and cram a icky larabar down my throat so I wouldn’t pass out…  Oh well, I still finished in record time of 36 minutes!  So not bad considering my tortoise speed  But man did this combo make me hungry!!  I had a smoothie immediately after getting home, plus then pizza dinner and cereal and could still eat more… bottomless pit!  Good thing I only have to change to this routine this week and then change it up again next week!  Otherwise, I would run out of food for eating Friday or until grocery shopping again!

And so my half marathon is all of a sudden 9 days away!  When did that happen??  This time next week I will be officially in taper mode and sitting as much as possible!  For my past half marathon’s I started carbo loading like 3-5 days before and this has always left me feeling rather squishy in the middle if you know what I mean so for this race, I think I am going to try to stick to a good amount of protein before and then maybe just Saturday lunch and dinner load up on carby things?  We shall see… being glutenless and carbo loading creates it’s own challenges as well…. One more long run on Saturday – 11 miles!!  Crossing my fingers for an encouraging run and not a imnevergoingtorunagainwhattheheckwasithinkingsigninguptorunthiscrazything!  I’ll maybe do a post about my pre-race eats and try to think of some other interesting things to post about.  I feel very uninspired lately and I think it has to do with the total exhaustion I have by the time I get around to blogging.  Wittyness and tiredness do not get along well with me… Sorry

Question – anything in your routine you have recently switched up?  How did it go? Did you realize you had a routine for a reason??