CONGRATS to all who ran the Dark Side this year, and I hope everyone had a great weekend!!!
I had an epic string of weird Bad Things happen over the course of four days, and the races were the only things that went 100% right, which was odd but nice, lol!
Expo: I arrived around 3:30pm Thursday and it was a lovely experience - no crowds, no lines, ample time to stroll and take it all in and just enjoy being a Star Wars geek. Bib and Kessel pickup was a breeze, as was shirt pickup and the merch arena. Same experience arriving late afternoon for marathon weekend, so that's it for me: I'll plan to do that for all future races.
5K: Didn't register for it this year and was afraid I'd be super sad... nope! I enjoyed sleeping late and a relaxed morning.
10K: So. much. FUN!!! Ran with friends and took a million pics. Couldn't understand how we kept winding up behind the Balloon Ladies from mile 4 through the finish when we'd started near the front of C... until I looked at my split times: mile 4 was almost a 40-minute mile. Ooooooh. It never felt like we waited in lines very long, so I must have been having such a good time, the actual time seemed to pass quickly, lol!
Half-Marathon: So. much. FUN. Again!!! Went to bed around 7pm the night before, not knowing if the race might be canceled due to the thunderstorms in the forecast, but too tired to stay up and find out, so it was with joy that I checked the weather when my alarm went off at 2am and saw no storms for many hours. I found the weather to be near-perfection: I thrive in high humidity and the cloud cover kept the sun from roasting me. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, a nice drizzle fell while heading into AK... bliss! (Yes, I'm serious - though I know I'm in the minority!) SO many opportunities to interact and take pics with he 501st - that's what makes the DS races so special to me. ♥ I stopped for as many as I could and watched the Balloon Ladies go by while waiting in line for the final 501st lineup just before the turn to the finish. Started in wave 4 or 5 of F and felt like things spread out pretty easily, as it did last year. MUCH better than my experience at Princess. When a pace group converged upon me and they were doing different intervals than I, I just walked a little extra and let them pass by, then went back to my intervals. Overall, another fantastic race weekend and a great way to end my season!