Florida has been wonderful this week! I spent Wednesday at Universal and we went to the Expo to get our race bibs yesterday. Universal was a lot of fun. I will tell you up front that it is no Disneyland, but it was still pretty cool. Harry Potter World was gorgeous! It was designed to be pretty to look at, and boy was it ever, but it wasn't very functional at all. All of the stores are too small and the crowds were very poorly managed. I guess that everything was designed by the actual set designer from the films. Because of that you actually felt like you were in Hogsmead. But I don't think a small wizarding town was ever meant to have thousands of people coursing through it. For this, they may have wanted to think about expanding some things. That set designer should have had a theme park engineering friend assigned to them. Dear Universal, This is something you may want to think about in the future.
All that aside, it was seriously magical. Check out the castle! I was seriously tempted to try some spells while I was there, but you aren't supposed to do magic when you are in Hogsmead. Good thing they said that, or I would have been seriously disappointed if I had attempted to "acccio" some butterbeer and nothing happened.
I don't know that I would ever go back, but it was totally worth it for this one time. And speaking of butter beer, that WAS totally worth it. It was delicious. I want some more right now. "Accio butterbeer!"
I am not going to tell you whether that worked or not....
Thursday morning I met up with my friend Ashley to go to the Disney Health and Fitness Expo. She lived in my neighborhood last year and we found out through facebook that we were both going to be running the WDW Half Marathon. It was so great to have someone to hang out with at the Expo.
The energy at the expo was incredible. It was so cool to be around so many people who are all gearing up to do something great. There were so many different kinds of people there. There were old people, and young people, super athletic looking people, and not so athletic looking people. There were a lot of people from all around the world who had come to run. It was another reminder that you really can do anything that you set your mind too. There is so little out there that can actually stop you. You just put one foot in front of the other. That is what I plan on doing on Saturday.
Like I said, the energy at the expo was amazing! I felt like a smarty pants because I had seen and heard about a lot of the things they had at the expo on other people's blogs. It was fun to be able to check the stuff out in person. I did spend a lot of money, but I still came out of there without too much stuff. I got an ifitness belt so I can carry my phone and camera for the race tomorrow and I got a tshirt to run in. The shirt I brought was long sleeved and I am a little worried about it getting to warm. However, it looks like the weather is going to stay pretty mild, so I think I would have been ok. But the shirt does match my outfit so I think I will still go with that. I also got a half marathon magnet for my car. This was the thing I wanted most. I can't wait to be able to see it every time I get in my car and know that I accomplished this crazy thing!
We got to meet Jeff Galloway! He talked about running injury free and gave some good insight on pacing yourself and how to stay strong all the way through your race. After he spoke, he came over the RunDisney booth and we got to chat with him. He was really nice and super encouraging. We had a great time talking with him.
Cigna is one of the major sponsors of the race. They had a booth where they were doing green screen photos. You could get a picture where it looked like you were in front of some snowy mountains (looked just like home), on the moon, or in front of the finish line! Since there is no way that we are going to look this put together at the finish line (and because we are here for the race and not for the moon) we got our picture taken in at the finish line. Now it will be really easy to visualize crossing the finish line when things get difficult :)
Almost there!
No comments:
Post a Comment