The Journey Begins! - Our Days Prepping for the Disneyland Half Marathon Weekend

So that THIS never happens again... and this was just a charity walk!

When we first began blogging about Disneyland, it behooved us quite a bit to learn as much as we could about the place as we went along. And in the beginning there was certainly an awful lot to learn! We had been going into The Park for years, and we thought we knew everything about the place, but we quickly learned just how little we actually knew when it came right down to it.

One of the first things we found out was that there are an awful lot of really cool events that take place at the Disneyland Resort.  Everything from conferences (like D23), to scavenger hunts (like MiceChat's "Gumball Rally" and the Cast Member's "Minnie's Moonlit Madness"), to parties inside Disneyland ("Mickey's Halloween Party"), just to name a few. 

One of the first events we learned about, though, that really grabbed our attention and tickled our fancies, so to speak, were the runDisney sponsored events that take place not only at Disneyland, but at Walt Disney World, as well.  With a name like runDisney, you can can probably guess for yourself just what we're talking about here.  Just in case, though, we're talking about "runs" in The Parks.  In particular, we were intrigued by the idea of running the "Disneyland Half Marathon" which takes place at the end of every summer.

When we first started blogging and reading others' blogs, we quickly learned just how many bloggers out there were runners themselves, and the idea of being able to do one for ourselves, and scoring an absolutely sick (the good kind of sick, not the bad) piece of hardware in the process, a nice shiny medal to show off, quickly took root in our consciences and became something we began talking about fairly regularly.  Not only for the medal of course, but for the sake of being able to say we had done one of these, and maybe even beginning to do so on a fairly regular basis.

The problem is, of course, being fit enough to do so.  We'll just be completely honest here, whether we like to or not, and hope that by being so, it'll give us an even greater impetus to meet our goal.  Mark's been on the higher end of the scales lately, and Chad's been overweight for over half of his life at this point.  And not just simply overweight, but medically obese.  There, he said it.  Honest is honest, right?  So the idea of running a half marathon, all 13.1 miles of it, is pretty daunting.  But once we started looking at just what all was offered by runDisney, we noticed they did in fact have a 5K run as well.  Now, 3.1 miles?  That just might be doable! 

So that is in fact our plan at this point; to get ourselves in shape enough, and trained up enough to not just walk the 5K during the Disneyland Half-Marathon weekend this August (which you can just walk), but to be able to run the entire trail without breaking down.  It might not sound like much to some people, and even we will admit that 3.1 miles isn't very far, but to us it would be a huge accomplishment and just one more stepping stone towards maybe one day going the distance and running the Half-Marathon.  But first things first!  We're in the middle of some weight loss right now, which is going very well, thank you much!  Mark has dropped quite a few pounds and has begun running some (frankly, he can probably already run the 5K), and Chad has lost 26 pounds since the middle of September and is continuing to drop.  We still have a long ways to go, though!

Our plan at this point is to utilize the Couch to 5K program to prepare ourselves for the run this August.  For the next few months we're going to continue to work on our respective weight loss regimen, which could take some time, but around the "2-1/2 month to go" mark, we plan on beginning the Couch to 5K to begin training ourselves to run the entire 5K non-stop.  It's a 9-week program, so it should work out nicely.  We may start it even earlier depending on how our respective "losses" go, but we'll see and alter as we go along however we think is best.

So, that's the goal which, of course, we plan on sharing here on our blog, all the way up through the run itself.  Obviously, for the foreseeable future, updates will probably be a little bit farther between as we work on our weight loss and regular exercise regimens, but as time draws closer and we begin training in the Couch to 5K, we'll be posting a lot more about our progress and getting ready for the race.  And of course, we'll take you straight up through the race and our results, etc. 

We're honestly very excited about this, which is why we're sharing it here! 

The goal: Go from couch potatoes (and overweight ones at that) to runners, one step at a time
The first step: Run the 5K during the Disneyland Half-Marathon this summer

Only time will tell if we'll meet our goal, but we're glad to bring you along with us for the ride, or run, we suppose.  We hope that you'll be rooting for us as we go through this process.  We could certainly use all the support we can get.  Let the running begin!