Thurs night was karate. It was a pretty boring class of working on stances. Necessary, though.
Friday morning was ab class. The whole time I was thinking of the 2010 goals I had discussed with Lindsay. We did at least 6 sets of planks for 60 seconds each, but I know I didn’t make it through all 6 without shifting my weight or moving my feet out of a slippery spot, so I’ll say 4 mins. And I can’t even imagine how many crunches we did. On the mat, on the ball, diagonally on the ball… I think 100 is a safe low guess.
I planned to do yoga after ab class but I saw an old friend and stopped to talk for way too long. I’m glad that is not a habit of mine.
Friday after the kids were out of school we left for the Disney Marathon weekend. The expo was pretty boring this year. Luckily Heather warned me of that over Twitter. But Brian was glad to see a 1:30 HM pace group. And my daughter was so glad Clif had Zbars and the Clif kids twisted fruit thingys. There were real Spi belts and at least 2 wanna-be spi belts, and everyone has invented a new stretchy headband with polka dots.
That night we had dinner in the hotel as usual, reviewed the timing and driving situation as usual, and got to bed early.
Brian kicked HM butt with a 1:29:11, but the kids and I never saw him finish. I made it to the EPCOT parking lot 3 times and kept getting told to drive over here or there to park. And I kept saying, “No, I’ve done this for 3 years, I know where I need to go.”
I finally found someone who agreed but said unfortunately by that time he couldn’t allow vehicles in and had to send me back to the hotel. That’s when I blew up. I was so pissed. And he’s like, “Ma’am I’m standing out here in the sleet and cold.” and I shouted back, “I want to be in the sleet, I came here this weekend to sit in the sleet and watch my husband run. I’m asking you to let me into the sleet.”
Didn’t work.
My daughters had never seen me so angry! But we got treated very nicely by our Guest Services Manager back at the hotel when I told her our story.
(Note on that photo. Brian likes to race sleeveless, but we knew it was going to be cold. So he found old socks from high school and asked me to make running sleeves out of them. I managed to find a mini sewing machine I once won at a scrapbooking day – meant for paper – and used it to sew up the ends of the socks at “sleeve” length. Voila!)
BUT — What a shame to plan for that moment for months and to have missed it. The important thing is Brian had a good run, a PR in fact, and in the end we had a fun night.
After a cozy nap, we went to EPCOT in the 35 degrees that night because of our dinner reservation. We did some of the new stuff at Innoventions, rode Test Track and Spaceship Earth, and then had dinner at Tokyo Dining. Brian had grilled chicken, Wendy had a tempura mix, and Alice and I shared sushi. We all ended up sharing with each other which is my favorite way to eat.
We went back to the Animal Kingdom Lodge and enjoyed chocolatey drinks and brownies around the indoor fire pit. Bedtime was early again because of our sunrise safari Sunday AM, thanks to manager Emily.
We met at 6:30 to check in for our sunrise safari. It was 27 degrees and 40 people had cancelled so it was a very private tour. There were hot and cold drinks to start, we all got name tags and blankets to share, and then we bused to Animal Kingdom. There the group normally boards a Kilaminjaro Safari vehicle at that point, but the doors were frozen on the vehicles so we stalled on the bus learning about the animals for about 15 minutes. Then we walked to the ride queue and stalled for another 2o mins in the cold. It was pretty miserable. 2 vehicles went past us trying to warm up enough to get the doors to open and close. We did finally board the safari and saw about 8 different types of animals. I’m sure it is a great tour in March with tons of species, but there were many, many empty acres of grass that we saw. The tour ended with an awesome breakfast buffet with most breakfast you can imagine, plus. I loved the passionfruit juice and plantains. ahh, sugary fruit.
We went back to the hotel, packed up, checked out, hopped over to the Hollywood Studios, cheered on some marathoners, and crossed the course to get to the Toy Story Mania ride. I joked with Alice that she had just done part of the marathon, so now she can go back to school tomorrow and tell people she did “part of the Disney Marathon on Sunday.” She got a kick out of that.
We got our Toy Story fix and then headed home. It’s back to the gym tomorrow!

(I did not gain 20 lbs, I have 2 shirts, a running jacket, and a huge hoodie on. And Alice is not pooping in the flower bed. We think.)