Now in it’s 3rd year, the Enchanted 10K is a staple of Princess Half Marathon Weekend and the first part of the Glass Slipper Challenge. This year my friend Pam ran this race for the 3rd time as part of her Glass Slipper legacy and I’m so happy to have her here today to share her experience and how the race has changed since its start.
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The Princess Half Marathon weekend included the Glass Slipper Challenge which is a 10K on Saturday and the half marathon on Sunday. I participated in my third Glass Slipper Challenge during the race weekend. For me this meant an early wake up call to arrive to the 10K for the 5:30 a.m. start. The weather for this year’s race was perfect. It was 50 degrees in the morning with no chances for rain. The race start for the 10K began in the Epcot parking lot. If you had participated in the Walt Disney World Marathon weekend races (5K and 10K), they began in the same location as those races.
I was in Corral C and they were releasing corrals every 8 minutes. The plan with my friends for this race was to get as many pictures as we could during the 10K so that for the half marathon we would only stop for characters that were unique or that we hadn’t taken pictures of before at any of our previous runDisney races. To be honest, this was one of my least favorite runDisney races. The reason for that is because we have to run on a stretch of road for three miles with very little entertainment on the road. Well, that changed this year.
The following characters were out on the 10K course. Right after the start, we run under an overpass and Elsa and Ana are on the bridge with fake snow flying down onto the runners. At the curve for the hairpin turn to head back towards Epcot is the Evil Queen as the witch from Snow White. After we run up the hill there was a character stop with Tinkerbell, Silvermist, Rosetta, and Clarence.
Then we had a surprise with Pocahontas and Meeko the raccoon. As we entered Epcot there were the characters on stilts. Then we entered Epcot where there was Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket outside of Germany.
And the last character stop that we really wanted to get was with Lumiere and Cogsworth right in front of France!
My friend and I stopped for all of these character stops which meant we were in line for quite some time for some of them (especially Tink and Pinocchio). Once we got to Lumiere and Cogsworth people were yelling out that the balloon ladies were just about a minute behind them. Then the balloon ladies passed us while we were in line. I wasn’t concerned because I knew we could run and get past them; but the race sweepers on bikes were now showing up and warning us of being swept. Since this was my third glass slipper and I am trying to maintain a perfect Glass Slipper legacy status, we decided that we had to abandon our spot in line and get running. We were hoping that others were going to be afraid and do the same thing and then we could quick get our picture and run; but that wasn’t the case.
We ran over the International Gateway, through the exit of Epcot and over the bridge towards the Boardwalk. The balloon ladies were just ahead of us at that point and the bikers were behind us. We could not stop for any other characters though, especially if they had longer lines. At ESPN we saw vacation Genie. We continued to run through the Boardwalk and took pictures of the balloon ladies on the bridge heading towards the Yacht and Beach Club.
We continued to keep a faster pace going through there and heading back towards Epcot in case we wanted to stop for any characters as we head back to the back stage of Epcot. We saw the last character stop there and it was for Sofia the First.
We ran through the back stage area of Epcot and came out near the Land and ran towards Finding Nemo. There were people dressed as coral from the sea on stilts there but there was a line so we continued to run towards Spaceship Earth and then backstage again to the finish line.
It was fun chasing the balloon ladies; but it wasn’t fun when the bikes were chasing us out of the park! I will say that runDisney stepped up this race for us. We finally had more characters along the course, especially during the three miles on the road leading to Epcot. It seemed like there were a lot more runners during this race. We spent a lot of time in lines for characters, longer than I am used to and we started from a closer corral. According to the runDisney site, there were 11,341 finishers for the 10K this year, 11,003 runners in 2015 and 8,969 runners in 2014.
This is still a fun race and a nice part of the Glass Slipper Challenge during the Princess Half Marathon weekend because you are finished with the race by 8:00 a.m. and then have the entire day to spend wherever you wish.
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When Pam was about to turn 40 she set a goal to do a 5K run before the big day. Little did she know she would be bit by the running bug and have since run numerous 5Ks, half marathons, 7 full marathons and 2 runDisney Dopey challenges to date.
She is a wife and mother of two kids who are very supportive of her sport/habit/addiction. She is a proud member of Team Chocolate milk and Team Oiselle! In May of 2015, she was selected by the Walt Disney Company from a carefully vetted group of 1,300 social media moms to attend a special conference. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity that she has been working hard for the past four years to become a part of. The event was life changing and she thinks about it just about every day!
Visit Pam on her blog Wife Mother Runner and follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Periscope (@pamjammer) & Snapchat (@pamjammer)!