I’ve spent far too long this afternoon trying to upload photos from YESTERDAY’S run. I’ve given up as efforts to get those photos through the insanely small wifi pipeline here at Residence du Parc have proven as fruitless as trying to fit the squarest of pegs into the roundest of holes.
So now I am trying to take out my frustrations on the internet gods and monsters by writing up a few stray thoughts from this morning’s 10K. It proved to be a markedly better experience… but that may have been because I found myself at the front of Corral B and thus had an easier time maneuvering through the course and navigating the much smaller photo opp queues. The joy of a runDisney event involves the crazed paparazzi style photo chase… and in the later corrals this is frankly an Ethan Huntian impossible mission. There just isn’t enough time to get a photo and maintain the minimum course pace requirements as the queue takes too damn long.
As a result, I left my hotel at 4:30 AM and opted to walk from there to the start line. Despite the proximity to the Disneyland Paris property, there are private roads, access paths, fences, and even a water hazard that required me to hoof it along the perimeter of the place to get to where I needed to be. This was the “as the crow flies” conundrum I think I mentioned in a brief post previously.
I made good time albeit wasn’t told by the myriad security guards I couldn’t just walk into the corrals; I needed to go to the holding pen in Disney Village and then walk to the start corral… and no, I couldn’t just walk the 200 meters through that gate there, I had to backtrack and again walk AROUND the perimeter and cut through a hotel to get there. It’s fine; I just wish they had told me at the first checkpoint and not the last one. Ah, well. A bit of a warm-up, right?
The pre-race announcements included DLP Running Ambassador Paula Radcliffe. The women’s world record holder and all around amazing runner, with titles won here there and everywhere, she’s something else to be sure. But there was a part of me that wondered if she was also something Pinocchio-ish too. I say this with both respect and with a grain of salt as it WAS 6:30-ish and I was a bit wonky. But here’s what I heard her say: she ran the 5K last night with her two kids. “Great, awesome,” I thought. Her son, who will be turning 7 soon, went out far too fast but she said he was able to maintain it pretty well. “Hey, good for him!” I nodded. She said he wound up with a 23 minute finish time. “Twenty three minutes?” I thought. “That’s a killer pace for me and I’ve been running for years!” Kid’s genetically predisposed to be an amazing runner and more power to him and I was super impressed; but then I swear she said they even stopped halfway through to ride The Tower of Terror. “Huh?” I thought. The Tower of Terror has an approximate ride length of 5 minutes, counting entry, setup and drop, then time to exit the elevator car having plopped into the Twilight Zone. That’s with zero queue, which I’m totally willing to grant happened. But that means Young Mr. Radcliffe put up an 18 minute 5K at 6 years and change? Holy pantaloons en fuego! I mean, it’s conceivable but I just don’t see how that’s possible. That’s blazing fast… but I guess, maybe… still… I wanted to believe she meant this happened at the AFTER PARTY, a thing that you could pay your way into (or, I guess be gifted a ticket to if you’re related to the runDisney DLP Ambassador and all). That may be unfair on my part but, man, it just seemed crazy that she seemed to imply that had he paced himself he would have REALLY put up an amazing finish time. No pressure, huh?
Editor’s Note: The above was written contemporaneously after the race back at the hotel. What is below was written in the cupboard under the stairs AirBNB I found myself in in Paris. As you’ll soon see, a lot has been lost in the translation/space-time continuum.
As for the 10K itself, it was a vastly different experience due to my being at the front of Corral B. I was able to dash between character photo stops and grab a shot here and there. I swear I wrote a longer piece on this but it seems to have been lost amidst the sporadic yet always crappy internet connections out in Chessy and the French countryside. You’d think Disneyland Paris would offer a decent WiFi coverage for its guests but… well… what can I say? This is France. A place where Jerry Lewis is a god. Not that he isn’t fine and all, but a god? He’s no Bill Murray.
Besides, as I sit here typing this I’m having all sorts of problems copying the photos from my iPhone to my laptop. If it’s not one thing it’s another. Sheesh. So in the interest of stormtrooper efficiency, this isn’t the post I was looking for… so move along, move along to the out of order random photo uploads I AM able to get off my phone.
