Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Disney Dreaming: It's Princess Half Marathon Registration Day!

Last night, thousands of women lay awake in bed, too excited to sleep. When they finally got to sleep, their dreams were full of running shoes, tutus, and the familiar outline of a famous mouse.

Despite the lack of sleep, these over-caffeinated women sat perched on the edge of hysteria, laptops and iPads at the ready, for the moment the clock struck 12. And as soon as those numbers turned to noon, all the women aimed their browsers at active.com in a frenzy that crashed the website and caused many of these women to pull out their own hair.



What is it, you may ask, that cause women who normally have the patience of a saint to go ballistic? That caused them to call in "sick" to work so they could be in front of their computers at noon? That flooded social media with cries of "I made it! WOOHOO!" once all had been righted in the internet world?

Why, they Princess Half Marathon, of course.



I was one of those women, although I didn't feel the pressure that most out there trying to register felt today. Since I deferred my Glass Slipper Challenge last year, all I had to do was register for the 5k, which I successfully did after an hour of filling out the same form on active.com.

It was a little crazy there for awhile, but we should have expected it--the Princess Half weekend is enormously popular and any time you have that many people trying to do the same thing at the same time, the internet is bound to crash. I hope everyone that wanted to register today had their running dreams come true and got a spot in the race of their choice.

A lot of people come down hard on the Princess Half--they call it crowded, they call it full of slow beginning runners and walkers, they call the expos a madhouse. They're all right, but I love it anyway. And here's why:

The PHM is "home" for me--it's where it all started. It was my first real finish line, my first long distance, my first shiny medal. It was my first runner's high, my first "mile 11"--my own personal point of half marathon hell--and my first experience into what my body could do if I believed it hard enough.



The first time I signed up for PHM, I did it weeks after registration opened--there was none of this computer stalking on registration day that goes on now. It's definitely a little stressful doing a registration like what today turned out to be, but it's also exciting. The worst part, I think, is getting all worked up and waiting 7 months. I won't even start thinking about training until October.

Until then, I'll keep working on my 10k time to send in for a good corral spot and daydreaming about the 3 costumes I get to come up with. See you at the start, princesses!

A penny for your thoughts: will you be running a Disney race this year? Have you ever missed registering for one because it filled up too quick?

4 comments:

  1. I'm so sad I'm missing out on PHM, but I will be cheering from AFAR! I can't believe how quickly it sold out. I knew it would go fast -- it did last year -- but I made sure to pre-warn my friends who had never run it before... and they were too lax about it and didn't get in! Ya snooze ya lose!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's a race on it's own trying to get registered!

      Delete
  2. Registration day has gotten so wild! I'm sitting out PHM this year to give Gasparilla a try but I'm sure I'll be back. It is such a fun weekend and the costume planning is almost as fun as running the actual race! Thanks for linking up with us this week!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'll definitely miss your costumes and race recaps this year!

      Delete