a rundisney first for both of us

i'm pretty sure neither of us got much sleep the night before the disneyland 5K.  for me, that's pretty typical anyway, but this was the old lady's first go-round at it.  getting up pre-4am isn't something she's used to, although i didn't get too much grumbling when it was time.  we'd laid out all of the pieces for our outfits the night before, and so it didn't take us too long to get ready:

you get it, right?  well, my woody costume is pretty obvious, although i was mistaken for jessie a lot.  and as for my partner?  well, do you remember in the first "toy story" movie when buzz ended up at sid's house next door and his little sister found him and decided to dress him up as "mrs. nesbitt" for a tea party?  there you go.

it was a very easy walk across the street towards the corrals.  there were tons of folks out and about, and we were pretty surprised to see that a lot of people hadn't costumed it up for this race.  i tried to chat and joke around with the old lady as we made our way through the staging area, but she wasn't quite ready for any of it just yet.

we were placed in corral c, which turned out to be the second-to-last one that morning.

there we started seeing a few more costumes, like this group who'd dressed up as the entire "frozen" cast:

and if you look in the center of this photo, you'll see a couple of pretty impressive brooms from "fantasia."

after listening to the race announcers yuk it up, trying to get the crowd warmed up and excited, we were treated to a pretty awesome live rendition of the national anthem via banjo.  perfect for the "country bears" theme of the morning.  and then after the wheelchairs and corrals a and b were released, it was our turn.

looking back at my camera roll, i found the usual plethora of super blurry, extra dark course photos.  with our annual passes, we get free downloads of all the photos that the disney photographers take, but for some reason i can't get to them, ugh.  i'll have to post them another day, because i know they got some pretty good ones.

the route took us through a backlot and behind california screamin' and then around cars land.  we found our first photo stop here, where we caught the eye of a run disney photographer who took this:

later, we were stoked to find that we'd been included in their photo album on facebook:

i managed to capture at least one projection, at least.

and then we finally made our way into california adventure itself.

1/3 of the way done!

as we came out of cars land, we came up onto this very long line.  we'd decided that we weren't running this for time anyway (because duh, it's a disney run and who cares?), so she got in the line while i ran ahead to see if the character was worth waiting for.  the weird part was that i saw nothing, and so i motioned for her to catch up to me and we continued on.

i always love seeing the waterfront all lit up, and we paused for a couple of shots here.

the course was really dark for a bit as we headed past the river rapids ride, and found another character photo op that we did stop for.

lotso the bear was our next stop.  he was hanging out right in front of the tower of terror.

the water stop was just beyond that.

we tried to run through the tunnel on our way to disneyland, which is always great because it's a sweet downhill, but there were so many people.  everyone around us was walking, so we had to slow down and walk with them.

mile 2 done!

we found ourselves entering the park through tomorrowland, just past space mountain.

good morning, matterhorn!

we'd both managed to knock our little hats right off of our heads during one of our few running stretches.  they'd been hot-glued onto headbands we were wearing, and so now we had to hold them up for photo ops.  boo.

yes, i know i look utterly ridiculous holding that little hat on my head.  yarg.

when we exited the park and headed back towards downtown disney, i knew it was almost over.  bummer.

we were pretty excited to get our medals, though.  they finally brought the 5Kers up to the same level as the 10K and half runners with the heavier metal finisher's bling vs. the kids' race-ish rubber ones.  yay!

on our way back to the hotel, we spotted this group of costumed runners who were bringing up the rear.

and just past them, the "sag wagons" - the vehicles that go through the course and sweep up the runners who can't quite make it to the finish line in time or who may have gotten hurt somewhere along the course.

the parks weren't open for business yet, so the gates were still quiet and empty.

they weren't even letting people go through security yet.

no, thank YOU, disneyland.  such a fun race!