Day 125 Happy: Mini-vacation in Orlando!
I have been looking forward to this weekend forever! Tonight was so much fun. After a long day at work (Saturdays always seem to take forever... probably because it's a 10 hour shift with no break), Marc and I hopped in my cute little car and drove over to Orlando!!
Since Sarah's race didn't start until 10, and we wouldn't be able to see her (or any of the race) until she was almost finished, we decided to head straight to our hotel and check in. It is really cozy, with a king size bed (love!) and it's only about 5 minutes from Universal Studios, which is where we are going tomorrow. After we got all settled in, we headed out to try and find something to eat. I considered Subway for about two seconds (better for my diet, but overdone) and then decided that I wanted something tastier.
We ended up heading over to the mall (whose name escapes me at the moment) and walking around. Marc decided on pizza and breadsticks and I had Chinese food. It was okay... definitely not worth blowing my diet for. But then I found out that veggie fried rice and a spring roll aren't actually that horrible calorie-wise.
After dinner, we decided to go to Downtown Disney, since it is close to where Sarah would be finishing her race. We walked around, and ended up at the Lego store. It was so cool! I drooled and lusted over the Harry Potter playsets... you can build the Hogwarts Express, and Hogwarts castle, and the Burrow, and tons of other scenes from the movies and books. They do tend to be pretty expensive, though. We did pick up a few Halloween pumpkin kits, and I got a Lego Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger and Marc got a Lego Darth Vader. They are so cute!
Unfortunately for my diet, we discovered the Ghiradelli store. They were giving out free samples of chocolate squares filled with pumpkin spice caramel. Could you just DIE? They were so amazingly delicious, we ended up buying some to take home.
Pretty soon, it was time to head over and find out where Sarah's race was going to end. After a few (by a few, I mean many) wrong turns, we finally found out that the race would be ending near the Disney Boardwalk's entrance to Epcot. Marc drove over there, we found a place to park, and walked over towards the Boardwalk. We didn't expect to see any of the race, and thought we would just be able to meet with Sarah for a few minutes after her race was done to congratulate her.
However, when we got to the Boardwalk, we realized that we could see people running across the little lake. We wandered over in that direction and, lo and behold, we were ON the race route. We found a spot to sit along the course just before the last turn, right before the finish line. We clapped and cheered for the runners who passed by, urging them on and letting them know that they were almost finished! I had been getting updates on Sarah all night via text message, so I had a pretty good idea about what time she was going to be finished, so I had about a 10 minute window when I knew she was going to be passing us by.
Although it was hard to see with all the lights shining in our eyes, and people were going by so quickly we barely had time to scan their faces, we saw and recognized Sarah. I yelled "GO SARAH!!" as loudly as I could and she raised her hand up in the air to show that she heard me. Marc even got a picture of her running!
After she was all finished and cleaned up, Sarah came out to show us the medal she got for finishing the race (in spectacular time for a first half marathon... 2 hours and 11 minutes!) and I got to ask her some questions for the story I was writing about her for school. We didn't keep her too long, since she got to go to the Food and Wine Festival in Disney, but we just wanted to congratulate her. I am so proud of her for doing such a great job. I am definitely inspired and Marc and I decided that we are going to start training to run the Disney Food and Wine Festival Half Marathon next year!
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