See Diva Run

Three days after hiking up a real mountain with Michelle, we were on a plane to Florida for the Expedition Everest Challenge. The challenge is a 5K race followed by an obstacle course and a scavenger hunt. We signed up for it last spring, and just to keep thing interesting, we decided to team up the girls against the guys. It was Krista & I vs. Mr Diva and our son. We stayed at the Coronado Springs resort, which was very nice, and spent our days “hiking” the parks. It was a whirlwind, and I spent way more time on my feet than anyone who hopes to ever recover from plantar fasciitis should! After closing the parks Friday night, we headed to Downtown Disney to visit Pleasure Island before it closed. Earlier in the day we visited the Blizzard Beach water park, and somewhere in there we visited the race expo to pick up our packets.

The Diva men model their shirts at the Expedition Everest base camp

Saturday morning we slept in, then headed over to the Animal Kingdom, which is my favorite of the Disney parks in Florida. We went on the safari, and then wandered over to Expedition Everest for fast passes. They were putting the finishing touches on this ride when we were in Florida for the 2006 Goofy Challenge. We got to run by it then, but it didn’t open for a couple more weeks. I’m a big fan of all the Disney mountains (Splash, Space, Big Thunder), but I’ve got to say that this one is my all time favorite.

We headed back to the hotel for a little nap, then we changed into our running clothes and boarded the shuttle bus back to the Animal Kingdom. We were surprised by the number of people who were there. The race had a wave start. The first wave was individuals. The second wave was the men’s teams. The third wave was women’s teams, but there were 9 more waves after ours. They weren’t all coed, so we weren’t sure how that worked. We just knew that the guys were getting a 5 minute head start. It was hot and humid, and I swear I was starting to chafe just waiting in the corral. Fortunately, the sun set shortly after we started running, which cooled things off.

We started in the parking lot, and ran down a service road, and then up to the front gate. We passed the first mile marker shortly after entering the gate. The next 2 miles were in the park, then back out to the parking lot for the finish. I didn’t get to run with Krista at the Iron Girl, so I was very excited to run with her in this event. I think she got tired of hearing how proud I am of her. The finish turned out to be a couple of flags. We thought that each event would be timed separately. We were wrong. From the 5K finish, we kept running until we got to the first obstacle, which was a series of beams we needed to climb over. I lost time climbing up onto the first one, before I figured out that I could swing my leg that high and vault over. The next obstacle was a cargo net, which I thought was pretty easy, once the people ahead of me got out of the way. The balance beam looked like a good way to break my brittle old bones, so Krista walked it while I held her hand. The final obstacle was another cargo net, but instead of climbing it, we had to crawl under it.

After completing the obstacle course, we had a long walk back to the main gate. Along the way we were handed our clue book. We had 4 answers to find, hidden in different parts of the park. We quickly learned that there were 12 different versions of the clue book, so following other people wasn’t necessarily helpful. We were getting tired from all of the running and walking. We jotted down our fourth answer and ran for the finish line, where we received our totally cool compass medals.

The guys were waiting for us at the finish line. They had been waiting a long time. They had a good run and had less traffic at the obstacles. They zipped through the scavenger hunt and finished at least 30 minutes ahead of us. We snacked on a banana and a bagel, and got our pictures taken. Now it was time to party in the park! We rode Expedition Everest 4 more times. We also rode the Kali River Run and the Dinosaur ride. We straggled out of the park minutes before closing, and caught the last shuttle bus back to the hotel. Another great adventure. We slept in the next morning, and then dashed from park to park, making sure we squeezed as much Disney fun into our trip as possible. It was exhausting, but also a ton of fun. We are already making plans for the Tower of Terror 13K next October!

Link to official event photos

[Show as slideshow]

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 11th, 2008 at 7:02 pm and is filed under Race Reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.