What better place for Ella to run her very first 5k than at one of our very favorite places – Walt Disney World! Not only that, she got to run it with Pete for the National Down Syndrome Society. We want to give a really big THANK YOU to everyone who donated to Sammy’s Superheroes for the race. Go #TeamNDSS!
The original plan had been for me to run the race with Ella and to then run the half marathon a couple days later, but we had to change the plans following my stress fracture back in September. Fortunately, it’s now nearly healed!
We hit the RunDisney expo Wednesday afternoon to pick up race packets and catch a few photos. Then we tucked in to bed just after dinner so we’d all be ready for a very early wake up.
At 3am I crawled out of bed with these two so they could get to the bus at 3:30. It helped a whole lot that I had done a Disney race the spring before so I knew how it all worked. Shuttle busses take runners from Disney resorts to the starting area super early to beat traffic, get through security, and hold the race before the parks open to the public. There are multiple stages of entertainment before the first wave of runners hit the course at 5am. There are so many participants at these races that it can take well over an hour for runners to begin racing! Even by Minnesota standards, it was quite chilly for my loves to stand outside for a couple hours, so they had lots of layers as they headed to the start.
When Sammy and I were ready to head to the finish line, look who came along – Nana and Papa! Yay!! My parents joined us for our first Disney trip together! (It was THE BEST having them there, and I’ve got lots more photos to come of the rest of the trip.) The four of us hopped on a shuttle bus at 4:30am to meet up with the rest of the NDSS crew at the finish line. Sam loved cheering for all the runners! (check out the video at the end of this post)
Ella and Pete started the race at about 6:30am, ran around the world in Epcot, and reached the finish on the other side just as the sun was coming up. I love these photos the Disney photographers captured.
Part of the team caught this photo together after the race. Aren’t they cute dressed as Dalmatians? We had such a great time meeting up with friends from around the country, all in support of Down syndrome awareness and advocacy. Some of our new friends ran multiple races over the weekend, with a few running all the races! That was a 5k, 10k, half marathon, and a full marathon in four days. And they had to get up by 3am each of those mornings!
I’m so proud of these two. Ella ran her first 5k and did it in honor of her little brother. She’s a pretty amazing big sister.
This video is short, but I wanted to include a couple of the clips I took of the race. In our next post, I’ll have even more clips when I share Sam’s first big race at Disney World!
One of the best weekends EVER!!