Just about a week and a half ago (heyyy look at me getting a post up in a timely manner!!), Adam and I loaded up the car and were headed to Orlando for the 2015 Walt Disney World Marathon weekend.  I debated which I should post first – a general overview of what we did over the weekend or a recap of the race.  I decided to talk about the weekend first.  As soon as we arrived at the Wide World of Sports, I met up with Andrea and we headed over to the Cigna Blogger Cook-Off.  Cigna is the official sponsor of the Walt Disney World Marathon and I was really excited when I received the email inviting me to the event.

I was even more excited when I found out that Andrea was going — please tell me I’m not the only one that gets all nervous before these things? Rachel, from Runners Tales, was there too and it was fun to catch up with her.  We were both ambassadors for the 2014 ZOOMA Florida race weekend.  I love how running brings us all together.

Cigna Blogger Cook-Off with Andrea

The cook-off was a lot of fun.  Cigna had a nutritionist talk to us about fueling for a race, then she split us up into four teams and we were each assigned to a chef with a bag of “mystery protein”.  Um, yum?  We were with Antonio and his mystery protein was shrimp.  At first, I was a bit bummed.. I’m not a seafood girl, but someone on our team came up with the idea of making Shrimp & Grits and I was happy again.  We dubbed ourselves #teamshrimpandgrits and got to work.

Andrea did most of the work on the grits and they were amazing.  For real.  A lot of it was Antonio eyeballing ingredient amounts and telling us when to stop pouring/tossing stuff in, but I’m going to try to recreate it and share the recipe because they were amazing, and that’s coming from a Southern girl that was raised on cheese grits and sweet tea!  After we finished cooking, the Cigna team set up a buffet lunch with all of our creations.  I was impressed – it was all really delicious.  Bloggers can cook!

We walked over to the expo so I could get my race packet and wander around for a bit while chatting with Andrea and taking a few pictures.  If you don’t take pictures, then it didn’t happen!  I really didn’t want to run with Arm Pocket so I bought a FlipBelt.  I know, nothing new on race day, but I’ve heard great things about them.  Thankfully, it worked out and I’m glad I bought and and decided to wear it Sunday.  It was so much easier to get stuff out of it.

Yep, running another marathon.  Whose idea was this?!

We left the expo and went to hang out with Carter and his girlfriend, Kristian, at the Magic Kingdom.  Carter ran Dopey so we didn’t stay long – we rode a few rides and decided we should probably go eat since he had to be up early in the morning to run the half.  We didn’t really want any of the quick services options in the Magic Kingdom, so we went to Carrabba’s.

If you tell the kids we went without them, I will deny it.

Dinner was okay – I tried something new (some baked ravioli thing) and that was a dumb idea.  Mezzaluna is amazing and I will never stray from it again!  I originally planned to get up early to go cheer at the finish line of the half on Saturday morning.. but those beds at the Dolphin are too darn comfy and it was way too cold.  That didn’t happen!  We got up and went back to the Wide World of Sports to meet up with Jenn and Keith.  She had her packet and we were all hungry, so we went over to Downtown Disney and had lunch at the House of Blues.  Annddd… I may have had shrimp and grits again.  It had this spicy tomato cream sauce on it and was amazing.  I need to learn to make that too.

After lunch, we went back to the Wide World of Sports to drop off Jenn and Keith and to pick up our other friends Michelle and Aleisha.  Since we were running the next morning, we didn’t want to be on our feet all day so we went and saw Taken 3.  It was predictable, but good.

We met everyone for a massive pre-race carbo-loading dinner at Giordano’s.  Wine totally counts as carbs, right?

My kind of carbo-loading.

Adam and Carter had another idea.. they, along with the guys that weren’t running, decided shots of whiskey were a good idea. Actually, I think Carter decided that all on his own.  Adam clearly looks thrilled with the idea.  Ha!

It was really nice to sit and relax and talk to everyone. While we didn’t train together (we’re all running at different paces right now), we did have a Facebook group where we talked about our training and cheered each other on. I’m so glad we were all able to get together and get our pre-race jitters out the night before.

Dinner also gave us a chance to talk to our cheer squad about where we were going to see them the next morning while we were running.  Yep, we brought our own, in the form of Michelle, Mike, and Colby.  Best cheer squad ever!

We were up before the sun the next morning and this happened.

Just running a marathon.  No biggie.

I’ll recap the race later this week, as this post is long enough without that nonsense thrown in. Yes, it was nonsense. Running a marathon when you haven’t trained for it is, well, not the brightest idea I’ve ever had. Oh well, live and learn!

After the race festivities were over, we went back to the hotel for a bit.  We were feeling like maybe we should refuel for a bit, so Adam and I stopped in the bar before going up to our room to take care of that.  If you were the people sitting there eating, I apologize, I’m sure we smelled great.

Refueling with beer (and coffee).

We had a few drinks and snacks while we waited for everyone to get showered and ready then the whole crew of us headed over to the Boardwalk for lunch at Big River Grille & Brewing Works.  I really wanted shrimp & grits (I’m not kidding!) but I settled for a quesadilla and a bowl of beer cheese soup.  And a mango margarita.  Did you know that mango margaritas are my favorite?  They are, and if they are on the menu, there is a 99% chance that I’m ordering it.

With Michelle, our very own cheerleader, at the Boardwalk.

Marathoners at the boardwalk — the 3 on the right are new marathoners!

They were all headed in different directions (some home, some to Universal), so we said our goodbyes and went back to the room so I could put on some pants because I was freezing!  Then we walked over to Epcot and spent the rest of the night hanging out with Carter and Kristian while drinking really yummy wine and eating some amazing food.  We need to make an effort to try more of the restaurants in Epcot, because what we had that night was incredible.

We stayed for Illuminations, then walked back over to the Dolphin and crashed.  I’m glad we spent most of the afternoon and evening on our feet because my legs never really felt all that tight.  Sure, I was sore in that “I just ran 26.2 miles” kind of way, but it wasn’t miserable.  And, spoiler alert, I had zero pain at all while running!

The best part of the weekend was coming home to hugs and kisses from these two kiddos. I know it’s good for us to get away on our own, but I miss them like crazy when we’re gone!

Whew, sorry for the novel!  I probably should have broken this into two blog posts but I was on a roll!

If you ran any of the events at Disney last weekend, I’d love to read your recaps of them as well!