Mike and I went to Walt Disney World May 6th - 10th for the Expedition Everest Challenge. This race is a 5k with obstacles and then a scavenger hunt. We got up super early, drove to the airport and caught our plane. We arrived in Orlando ahead of schedule on Friday and picked up our luggage and rental car. We first went to the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex to pick up our race packets. There was some very cool theme stuff set up outside but it had rained so they had moved the whole check in process inside. Our number was 1422. Then we checked in at Disney's Pop Century Resort, one of the value resorts. Right away it was not my favorite resort. I guess I am to much of a princess about hotels. Though usually I don't care. Just spoiled by the two Port Orleans resorts, I guess. Mike thinks we were originally in a room with a queen sized bed but we wanted a room in the 70's building on the ground floor, instead of a 2nd floor room in the 80's building. So we ended up in a room with two full beds. The room was cramped and tiny. I was not happy.
We had some not so tasty lunch and eventually, we went to Epcot for a couple of hours. We were supposed to be in Epcot until our reservation at Via Napoli after 9pm. However, the heat and humidity quickly got to my feet and I was already starting to get blisters. Mike got an avocado margarita in the Mexico pavilion and we wandered over to Via Napoli to see if they could squeeze us in early since we already had a reservation. No such luck. Mike got me pizza at the counter service from Via Napoli and we headed to Port Orleans Riverside for dinner. We shared a salad and some pasta. It was perfect. Then we headed back to our room. I was already an unhappy camper sadly. So my lovely husband decided to go get us switched to Port Orleans French Quarter for the next day. We only had to stay one night at Pop. YAY!
So the next day, the day of the race, we woke up early, packed up all our stuff again (not that we got much out) and headed to Epcot for a couple of hours. We made it for rope drop and I headed to Test Track while Mike went to get fast passes for us at Soarin'. I got some great pictures of some of the topiaries for the International Flower and Garden Festival. We rode both rides and bummed around Epcot some more before going to Downtown Disney for lunch and our matinée showing of Thor. We ate lunch at Fresh A Peel. Super good! Mike wanted Chocolate and Caramel popcorn from the candy store so we walked over there before the movie. Then rode the boat across and picked up our tickets for Thor. Thor was a good movie and it was nice to sit in air conditioning and baby my feet for a couple of hours. After Thor we went to check in at French Quarter. We ended up with a second floor room with both a river and a parking lot view. It was on the corner. The really nice thing is there was almost no walking to get to our car and if I couldn't do the stairs we had an elevator. We bummed around for 45 minutes in our room and got ready for the race. Then we headed over to Animal Kingdom to ride the safari ride and eat at Yak and Yeti's before the race. Unfortunately, the safari ride had animals chilling in the road so we had to leave line to make our reservation at Yak and Yeti's. Mike and I shared the crispy Mahi Mahi. Mike also got an extra side of stir fried vegetables and some fried rice. It was very tasty.
After dinner we meandered out of the park and back to our car to put the final touches on getting ready for the race. I switched out my socks and ensured all my band aids were in place. We put on our race belts and numbers. Then we headed over to the race area to meet up with some of our Team AllEars members. Eventually we met up with Rhonda and Cynthia who were racing as singles. Rhonda is one of our team members. Then we got Eric and Michael and some of their friends over. Eric and Michael were racing as team Epic Dads and are some of our Team AllEars teammates as well. Our team was Team Fibot, named after our wild Bengal kitty, Fiona. We all stood around talking until we had to get into our respective starting groups. We also decided to meet up by Nemo after the race so we could ride rides together during the party. Eventually, the race started.
Mike and I were in group 5 so we had to wait 20 minutes from when the first wave started before our start time. But we finally got started and I switched off from jogging and speed walking until the group spread out enough for us to start doing intervals. That was about 4 and a half minutes in. We did our interval run/walking, 1 minute run and 4 minutes walking. I will tell you, running at sea level is so easy. I had no breathing problems. Our first obstacle was a series of hay bales that we had to get over. Just one high so Mike and I easily vaulted them during one of our run intervals. Some people stepped on them and some jumped over. Then we raced through the Animal Kingdom park and some of the backstage area. It was neat. Just after the turn around point we hit some tires. I almost bit it on the first set up made it through after I slowed down. Of course, they had to come during a run interval. After that we just raced. We saw another one of our Team AllEars teammates, Melanie, running the race. That was cool. Our final obstacle was a choice just after mile 3. We could climb a cargo net tent, crawl under some nets or run through a sand pit. Mike and I climbed. The rest of our team mates ran through the sand pit I guess. According to my Garmin the 5k wasn't even 3 miles and I stopped it after the last set of pads. There was a sort of finish line set up further down the parking lot that we never went through and it makes me wonder if we were supposed to go through that and something got changed at the last minute. So, unfortunately, I don't know what my racing 5k time was at sea level. We finished the race part in 38 minutes and 9 seconds, according to the race results. And of course that was pretty fast. My Garmin said my average pace was 13:19 minutes per mile. So I did have a good speed increase.
Anyway, I had taken pain killers before the race and didn't have too many problems with the blisters I already had or with my joints. That was very nice. So we were on to the scavenger hunt part. We got our first clue and Mike gave it to me. He thinks I am pretty good with puzzles. Funny thing is out of the 5 clues, I solved 2, Mike solved 2 and we got help on one. I solved the first clue and we got our second one right off. That was the one we had to get help on. Luckily, we had a long way to go to get to our next clue turn in point so I got to try a bunch of wrong combos. We got help and got our next clue. Mike solved that one right away. It was one of those perspective clues sort of like a magic 3D puzzle. I have never been able to see those. I had seen other people turning their cards a certain way and mentioned it to Mike. He messed with the card for all of a second and solved the clue. We started jogging to our next check point and got the 4th clue. This one I solved in two seconds flat. We got to our next final check point before the finish and got the 5th clue. Mike quickly solved it and I confirmed it as we were completely sure at first. You took the first letter for the last 4 clues to make the first half of the word and then finish with the number 10. AKA. Mountain. It was a good last clue. We ran to the finish, turned in our last clue and crossed the finish. The photographers snapped some really bad pics of me crossing the finish line. One cut me completely out of some of the pictures. And we were done. We finished the scavenger hunt in 30 minutes and 46 seconds. Our overall time was 1 hour 29 minutes and 18 seconds. We finished 319th in our division, which was co-ed teams. It was a lot of fun.
Getting out of the finish shoot we grabbed water and some snacks and headed over to Nemo to meet the team. Mike and I were a little worried we finished so much later than most of them we wouldn't get to meet up with them. Eventually, the whole group got back together and then we waited for our AllEars teammate Melanie to perhaps meet up too. We must have just missed each other because eventually our group went down to ride Triceratops Spin together. We skipped out of the dance party and Mike and I decided to wait for the bag pick up line to go down before getting our bag. So we headed over to Dinosaur and rode that. Then we rode my favorite Expedition Everest. I love that ride at night. It is so much cooler because you can't see anything going through the mountain. Sometimes during the day you can see the track and such. We rode Everest twice and I started to fade. So Mike and I said goodnight to everyone and our group broke up. Mike and I got our bag on the way out of the park and went back to our hotel room to crash. Such a good race.
Sunday morning I had a hard time getting up and we missed the opening of Magic Kingdom. Sadly, that is one of Mike's favorite parts of Disney. They have a pretty cool welcoming ceremony every morning. We parked at the Poly, got me some Advil and a bagel with cream cheese and Mike some real coffee instead of the Nescafe stuff. He was a little happier after that. Then we rode the monorail over to Magic Kingdom and played. We decided we wanted to try to get more pictures with characters. Normally we refuse to wait in line over 15 minutes if we can help it. But we waited for some characters and took it easy. We rode some rides and were about to get some lunch when I got a text from Melanie that she was in Magic Kingdom and wanted to hang out with us. We did a couple of rides with Melanie and then split up so Mike and I could get some lunch. Oh yeah, I got my Dole Whip. So much better in hot weather. Mmmmmm! We headed back to the hotel room for a while, had dinner and then headed back to Magic Kingdom for fireworks and to use some of the fast passes we had picked up earlier in the day. We did our tradition of riding the Jungle Cruise at night. Then we headed home (as I call our good hotel room) and crashed.
Monday, I woke up and could barely walk. We had done too much for my feet and legs. Mike thought the race caught up to me. I sent Mike out to Hollywood Studios and I stayed in to rest. I tried to soak the pain out of my feet and legs. That didn't help much. Mike came back just after I had applied Icy Hot to my legs. He was a sad puppy because I decided I couldn't go to the parks that night. Sadly, I didn't eat enough that day and so I was nauseous that night. He took me out to get pasta at Riverside. I slowly worked on eating that and the baguette Mike brought me back from Epcot. Eventually, I felt a little better. Mike went back out to the parks for a little while longer before coming home to play on the computer. While Mike was at the parks I was supposed to check him in at Southwest. We always pay for me to have early bird check in so I can get a window seat but don't pay for Mike. I spaced the time and checked him in 5 minutes late so we ended up in B group for boarding.
Tuesday was a our last day. I tried to get up and pack so we could go to Magic Kingdom and make opening. We missed it again. The plan was to go to Magic Kingdom, make rope drop and try to get pictures with Rapunzel and Flynn, then go to Hollywood Studios so I would get to ride Rockin' Rollercoaster and Tower of Terror. Of course, we missed rope drop and by the time we got to the park the line for Rapunzel and Flynn was too long. Even though we didn't miss it by that much. I wasn't feeling well still so we skipped the pictures and I decided to skip Hollywood Studios too. So we went to Downtown Disney (by then I was miserable) to try to get food and then go see Fast Five at the AMC. Luckily, I tried eating some of my beef jerky and figured out that I needed protein, not carbs. We got me some more food and I slowly felt better. So we went to the movie.
After the movie we headed to the airport to drop off our rental car and catch our plane. We cut it a little close for my comfort but made it with no problem. Melanie was waiting for the same plane. Melanie and I were in A group and sat in rows across from each other. I stuck a bag in the seat next to me and dinked around with it until Mike got on the plane. I know, I know...sort of bad of me. But I want to sit next to my hubby. I was more nervous this time since I checked Mike in late. It all worked out though. We got to Denver and there was supercell weather activity that shut down the airport. So we got stuck in a holding pattern. Eventually, we had to fly to Colorado Springs and pick up gas. We were on the ground at Colorado Springs for over an hour. We finally got into Denver 2 hours late. At the luggage claim Mike and I met Melanie and her husband, Bryan. After we got our luggage we got our car from the Pikes Peak parking lot and drove home. We had to stop and get me a little more food before finally getting home. But we got home okay, loved on our kitties and crashed out.
All things considered I really enjoyed our trip. The race was great and I had a lot of fun.
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