It was a warm start to a hot race at the 2013 Walt Disney World Marathon. Temperatures were far less than ideal, but the course support was much better than you would fin in all but a few world class races. That isn’t to say that there weren’t a few snags, but with 25,000 runners, it’s hard to do everything right. They did run out of sponges at the ESPN venue, and the mile 20 spectacular didn’t even begin to live up to the pre-race hype that Disney had been pumping out, well in advance of the race. I would also question the sanity of a course design team that would send runners past a sewage treatment plant and dump, when there is a possibility of high temperatures and humidity. But those minor details didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the runners, and I managed to finish, in spite of the brain numbing heat. In true Disney style, there isn’t another race like it, and if you run it too fast, you are missing out on most of the fun.

And now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

Running has amazing powers that are impossible for a non-runner to understand. Before I started running, I would have never dreamed that I could have run 13.1 miles. Even while I was training for my first half marathon, the thought of running 26.2 miles seemed impossible. But that first marathon finish changed something. It changed that way that I view impossible situations, the way that I view running, and the way that I view life.

Another big change happened on December 17, 2012. After running 26.2 miles in the cold, the rain, and the wind, I became something different, yet again. I became a Marathon Maniac!

There is something about an actual race that is completely different than even the best training run.