The Marathon of the Mouse... part 1

I am going to split this post into 3 sections - I will divide it into my experiences out there (part 1), Team Hendryx and TNT athletes results (part 2) and a little on the race and course for runners who are thinking about doing this (part 3).

Part 1 - I showed up to this race as a coach for Team in Training (TNT) so I was not going to "race" this race - I was only on the course for support of the 1900 TNT athletes that would complete either the full or half marathon. So I was going to be an unofficial Goofy Challenge person. Central Florida showed up with 10 coaches and over 100 athletes and it is our job as coaches to be out on the course until the last participant finishes. Since we had 10 coaches and many of the coaches were not going to run the course but were going to cut the course (none of them were official marathon finishers or had timing chips so do not get your panties in an uproar) in order to be at many places around the course so they could see and cheer for their athletes, Sean and I decided to run hard for the first 5.5 miles of the half and 10.5 miles of the full in order to be in the Magic Kingdom to cheer for our runners (well, unlike many coaches from other areas, we cheered for all the runners). It was kind if cool because we were the first TNT runners for the race and about 20th overall when we stopped so we had tons of spectators cheering for us until we stopped - then we got a ton of strange looks when we stopped and hung out cheering in the magic kingdom for over an hour. We were the only TNT coaches that were in the magic kingdom and I think all the fast TNT athletes appreciated us being there and cheering them on.

After about an hour were would start running again and we would just "leap frog" the runners and stop at another spot to support the runners. When we got to about mile 10 in the half and 24 miles in the full we waited for our last participants in order to help them finish in front of the sag wagon. It was very close for our runners/walkers but we got them to the finish line and they became official half marathoners and full marathoners

Total distance covered this weekend 39.3 - total running 35.