Tinkerbell 10K Race Recap

Hello! I ran the Tinkerbell 10K Saturday and Half Marathon Sunday. It was an amazing Run Disney weekend! Here’s my Tink 10k recap – the half marathon post will be coming later.

First things first… Running at Disneyland (or DisneyWorld) is a different experience from the usual races. You run through the theme parks and a lot of people dress up as Disney characters or wear some sort of fun costume. I’ve run several Disney races and dressing up is one of the my favorite parts.

For my first  Disneyland race I dressed as Ariel. But I wanted to do it again even better mainly because my hair is super long right now and I need a trim. I figured I should be a mermaid for a day before I do that. AND I wanted to run with my hair down and knew I could only do that for a 10k race at most.

I’ll share how I put this Little Mermaid costume together in an upcoming post…

The race starts at 5:30am. And since it’s a fairly big race and there are assigned corrals, security check points and traffic/street closures you have to get there pretty early. I woke up at 3am!

I did my usual pre-race stuff… bathroom / sunblock / clothes (laid out the night before) / iced coffee / Spark for the car / frantically think I forgot something but force myself to get on the road…

Luckily I live in south Orange County so it’s a fairly short drive. There was a complete stop in the freeway for about 5 minutes. I think maybe the police were clearing an accident? But I got there with time to park, hit the bathroom and walk to the starting line.

I originally was only going to do the half marathon but decided to register for the 10K last week. Since it was so last minute I was assigned to the last corral. I asked to change it at the expo, but that was a no-go.

The last corral at Run Disney races often is mostly walkers or walk/run athletes. I knew I would not be able to run at the start because of the crowds. And I was wearing mermaid leggings with my hair down… so I decided to not wear my running watch and just enjoy the race and take tons of pictures. Going into it with that strategy made it a really fun run. (I’ve tried to do the weave around people in previous Disney races and it’s kinda frustrating.)

Since they spread out the corrals I had some time before the start to take a few pictures and chat with the other runners. I really like that because everyone at these races is really there to have a good time. And since the course goes through Disneyland and California Adventure there’s a lot of fun stuff to talk about.

And we’re off! As expected it was mainly walking / trying to run and being stopped every 10 yards for the first mile.

We ran into Disneyland from the back and came into Toon Town first thing. Since the theme of the race is Tinkerbell there were “Lost Boys” from Peter Pan around the park.

Since it was so early the sun was slowly peeking out as the race started. It was perfect weather – nice and cool.

We ran through ToonTown, –> Tomorrowland –> past the Matterhorn –> through Fantasyland –> through the Castle –> Frontierland –> past the river –> New Orleans Square –> Adventureland –> to Main Street.

As we left Disneyland there were a few Lost Boys bidding us farewell… There were not a lot of ‘character stops’ on the course aka places to take pictures with Disney characters.

This is right when you enter/leave Disneyland…

After Disneyland we ran to California Adventure. You also run around the theme parks and Downtown Disney. It’s still fun to run around the parks because the Disney cast members come out and cheer plus it’s a fun peek at some of the behind-the-scenes of Disneyland.

And before ya know it – the finish line!

Enjoying the race, spectators, course, other costumes and everything made it fly by even though I walked a lot of and stopped for pictures. But I’m glad I did because I will not be wearing my hair down for another race – it was super knotted and gross at the end.

Tinkerbell 10K race done and done!

I drove home and refueled with breakfast, tons of fruit punch Spark and later pizza for dinner. Then, it was another early wake-up for the half Sunday. Recap coming soon!

Question: When was the last time you went to a Disney theme park?

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