.: bistan.net :.

I’m too lazy to rewrite my weekend recap for this blog, so below is an article I wrote for my local running club’s newsletter.  It’s long, but stick with it because lots of pictures are below.

Those of you who know me are aware of how much I love all things Disney.  In fact, I share the same story told in previous newsletters by several other Macon Tracks members:  one main reason that I started running almost three years ago was to run the 2009 Walt Disney World Marathon. Of course, I didn’t stop with that race.  In fact, I’ll participate in my third Disney Marathon this January. 

Disney is packaging their race series under a new “brand” called runDisney and Jeff Galloway has signed on as the official training consultant.  When Disney announced that they were combining the Tower of Terror 13K with the Race for the Taste 10K to create the new Wine & Dine Half Marathon, and I knew I had to participate in the inaugural event!

A few days before leaving for Orlando, I saw a twitter post that said “Check the Disney Parks Blog at 11:00 for an opportunity to go on a training run with Jeff Galloway”.  I checked the blog, quickly submitted my name, and waited.  At 2:00, I got the confirmation that I was one of only 20 people chosen!  Needless to say, I quickly modified my travel plans to be there.

On the morning of the training run (the day before the half-marathon), the other participants and I arrived at Epcot at 6:30am.  We checked in and signed waivers allowing Disney to photograph and video the activities.  We also received a nice moisture-wicking runDisney shirt, which is currently not available for purchase.  Then, Jeff Galloway arrived.

Some of us chatted informally with him, while others jumped at the chance to take photographs of the beautiful sunrise over the closed theme park.  After a little while, we were told to warm up for our training run.

The training run consisted of a run through Future World followed by two loops around the World Showcase, which was bustling with activity in the early morning hours in preparation for the first day of Epcot’s Food & Wine Festival. We had the option of running at our pace, staying with Jeff (and his run/walk/run method), or falling behind.  Of course, I stayed within earshot of Jeff.  It was amazing to be able to run in such a small group through such a beautiful place with an athlete like Jeff Galloway. Of course, you can’t run at Walt Disney World without Mickey Mouse.  He was on hand too to welcome us back to Future World. 

After the run, there were numerous photo opportunities.  The photos of our group with Jeff Galloway will likely be used for future race publicity.  It was surreal having my photo taken with the world’s most famous mouse and one of running’s best known athletes.

Jeff Galloway is a great guy.  After even more photo opportunities, he took over an hour to answer all of our questions and share tips and strategies.  The most popular topic by far was how to properly eat before a night race, because running in a long-distance night race is something that most runners have yet to do.  As expected, stretching and injuries were discussed as well.  Did you know that Jeff has not had a running-related injury in 31 years?  That’s my entire life span!  And as for stretching, Jeff doesn’t do it!  He told us that current research shows that stretchers are more likely to get injuries than non-stretchers.

Other Disney Sports administrators were on-hand as well, including Disney’s well-known race director Jon Hughes.  They told us that Disney is actually planning a fourth race for the 2012 series to complement the Wine & Dine Half Marathon, WDW Marathon Weekend, and the Princess Half Marathon.  That’s great news, but not for my wallet!

After the Q&A session, Jeff gave us each an autographed photo.  He even offered his email address in case we had any additional questions.  Then, we all exited the park, which was about to open to regular guests.  The training run with Jeff Galloway was, by far the highlight of my weekend.

Later that day, we were off to the expo.  Although it was smaller than the expo held during the regular marathon weekend, it was still very good.  That afternoon, my kids participated in the Disney Kid’s Races.  I constantly tell people that the kids’ races are the best deal at Disney.  For $10, each child gets a shirt, a nice finisher’s medal, snacks, a goody bag and lots of fun.

The next morning my wife Kimberlie, one of Macon Track’s newest members, participated in her first 5K ever: Mickey’s Halloween 5K.  It is currently the only short race that goes through the Magic Kingdom.

The Wine & Dine Half Marathon was later that evening.  With a starting temperature of 74 degrees at 10:00pm, it was the hottest long-distance race that I’ve participated in.  During the run, I actually caught up with Jeff Galloway at mile 11!  He was pacing someone using his run/walk/run method.  I ran (and walked) and chatted with them for a while before they left me at mile 12.  The race wasn’t my best half-marathon, but it wasn’t my worst either. 

The course started at the newly rebranded ESPN Wide World of Sports, and followed Osceola Parkway to Animal Kingdom where we ran through the park.  Animal Kingdom almost always closes to guests at 5:00, so it was extremely rare to be there at night.  There was a “Jurassic Park” feel as we ran through the darkness, knowing that animals were nearby but unable to see them from the darkness.  We then ran back down Osceola to Hollywood Studios and continued through the resort area to an Epcot finish. For those who have run the Disney Marathon, the last eight miles of this course nearly mirrored the marathon course.

The staging area and pre-race activities were surprisingly the best I’ve seen at Disney.  At that point, I was impressed that an inaugural race was that well organized.  However, the finish line area at Epcot was a logistical disaster.  To retrieve a bag from baggage claim, the tired runners were funneled into a very long line down a relatively narrow hallway. 

A post-race party was held in the world showcase and each runner was given vouchers for “one drink” and “one taste”.  However, when you divide 15,000 runners (and the many others who purchased party tickets) among only 26 food stands, those lines were excessive as well.  The lines were so long that I didn’t have the energy to stand in them.

Although overall I had a great time, I doubt I’ll continue participating in this race annually.  It always takes a few years for a new race to work out all of the problems, even at Disney.  Also, I typically do much better racing in cool mornings than warm, humid evenings.  Next stops for me: Chickamauga Half Marathon in November and back to Disney for marathon weekend in January!

After visiting the Georgia Aquarium yesterday, we ate a quick lunch at CNN Center and headed to the World of Coca-Cola.  For me, visiting the “coke museum” is like a recovering alcoholic visting a bar.  Again, we had visited before, but the free tickets were good enough reason to return.  Again, here are some photos:

Yesterday, while Kimberlie was in a training class at Emory, I decided to take the kids to the Georgia Aquarium.  They went before, but Tristan wasn’t quite 3 and Mackenzie was barely 3 months.  First of all, I am NOT an aquarium fan.  I would much rather see the fish fried and on my plate.  We did, however, have a good time.

The strangest part was the number of signs at the entrance that include “No Fishing Poles” in the list of prohibited items.  At first, I thought it was a joke, but it’s also clearly noted on all of our tickets as well.  There are other items that, in my opinion, would be more important to list such as wheeled shoes, nuclear materials, laser pointers, etc. I’m amazed that the aquarium has such a repeated issue with people taking in fishing poles that they have to specifically ban them on their signage.  Only in Georgia!

The kids enjoyed the few hours that we spent there and they really liked showing Kimberlie all of the pictures and telling her about each one.  Of course, here is a small sampling of some of those pictures:

This past weekend, before I ran the Labor Day Road Race, we snuck away to the beach.  I somehow managed (after much persistance) to score an awesome deal on Hotwire for Jekyll Island during Labor Day weekend and off we went.  It was our last chance to get away since our fall schedule is totally packed, thanks mostly to soccer.

Since I neglected to post the Myrtle Beach pictures from our July vacation, I thought I might post a few from this getaway:

This was certainly a baseball weekend! Saturday night was Mercer night with the Macon Pinetoppers.  Sunday we went to the Braves game, part of Kimberlie’s birthday present.  On Sundays, kids are invited onto the field after the game to run the bases.  They get a t-shirt and certificate and it’s free!  On top of all that, it was kid’s day at the game with tons of stuff to do.

Enjoy the photos below:

This has not been a good month for technology at my house.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that my Macbook would no longer charge.  Then I discovered that my cat had chewed through the power cord.  No biggie — I was a little ticked off (especially since this is not the first time that its happened), but I ordered a new one from Amazon.  Small setback.  Nothing major.

On Tuesday, I we discovered that we couldn’t channel surf past channel 20.  We technically only pay for channels 2 – 19 for a measly $16 a month.  A long long time ago, when we had high-speed internet installed, the tech “forgot” to put the trap back on.  The lack of this trap allowed us to go all the way up to channel 70.  That’s $52.00 worth of cable for $16.00 a month.  Do the math and that is $3168 for savings since we moved in.  Of course, we are very dependent on those upper channels — CNN and History for me, TLC and HGTV for Kimberlie, and of course, Disney for the kids.  Restricting us to local and public access channels really sucks!

We went tubing in Helen two years ago and had a great time.  This Saturday, we decided to do it again.  I wanted to take the small point & shoot camera and my beloved iPhone with me.  I knew it was risky so I took a ziplock bag to keep them safe.  On the way down the river, I took photos and tweeted and checked email and facebooked.  Everything went fine.  At the end, it was time to get out so I put the camera and phone in the bag and proceeded to get out of the tube and wade to the riverbank.  The water was only about a foot deep so I put the bag in my pocket.  All of a sudden, the river got really deep.  The water was so cold that I wasn’t concerned with my technology.  Somehow, the water seeped through the bag and ruined both: my $170 camera and my iPhone 3G.

Needless to say, this has not been a good month for technology in my house.  It looks like we will be going with Dish Network in the very near future to get our channels back.  And, since I’m eligible for an upgrade with AT&T, it looks like I’ll be getting the iPhone 4!  To cover the costs, I’m dropping my $30 data plan to a $15/month plan.  The only problem: there is a 3+ week wait to get the new phone.  I am about to lose my mind here!

With Toy Story 3 taking over the theatres, I’ve been thinking a lot about some of the toys from my own childhood.  We recently visited the Please Touch Museum in Philadelphia and found that they had many of the toys from my childhood in mint condition.  Please forgive the photo quality.  All of these toys were photographed from behind a glass case with horrible lighting conditions.

These Fisher Price blocks popped up around 1976 and I popped out three years later, so naturally I had a set:

I also had one of these, although it remained at my grandparents house:

I miss my Construx set.  It was like an erector set for kids:

The Spirograph was awesome:

I have this exact set of Tinkertoys (on the right) in my attic:

My favorite toy growing up were Legos.  I still have thousands of Legos in my parent’s basement.  I wish I had room for them at my house.

I also had this Snoopy Sno-Cone machine.  It looks like this one is missing a piece — the red shovel.  The Snoopy on top served two functions.  You pressed it down to push the ice through and you turned it upside down to squeeze the syrup through.

I had this Popoids before I got into Legos:

I still remember the jingle “Pogo Ball is what you call it”.  And I had one:

I also had this exact Tonka truck.  Tristan has something similar, but it’s bigger and the quality is much less.

SuperSoakers were the watergun that every kid wanted.  I remember the SuperSoaker 50, SuperSoaker 100, and SuperSoaker 250:

My sister and I had lots of Little People sets.   Little People are still around, though they’ve evolved over the years.  She had the nursery set, seen below:

My sister was also very much into Barbies.  She had the McDonald set seen in the next two photos.  I’m trying to do whatever possible to steer my daughter away from Barbies.

So what does a museum do with surplus toys? Build sculptures of course! This is a real size sculpture of the arm/torch from the Statue of Liberty, constructed of old toys:

This is an life-sized elephant, also constructed from toys:

Who know’s what the next popular toy is going to be?  Right now, “Silly Bandz” are all the rage.  If you’ve looked closely at photos of my kids recently on this blog, you’ll see that they have an arm full.  The museum even had some on display, and they’ve only been around a few short months!

Of course, this is not my complete “Toy Story”.  I had tons of cool toys.  But visiting the museum and watching Toy Story definitely brought back memories!

Two weeks ago, we spent almost a week in Philadelphia.  I had a work-related conference across the river in Camden, New Jersey so I brought the family along to see a new city. We flew to Philadelphia, but decided to try something new (or old) and take Amtrak back to Atlanta.  It was a great experience.  If you ever get the chance to travel by train, take it!  It forces you to relax and enjoy the scenery.

Since I’m so far behind on blogging, I’ve decided to just post photos from the recent trip.

One of the highlights of our recent trip to Philadelphia was visiting the Please Touch Museum.  It’s similar to the Imagine It! children’s museum in Atlanta, but on a much grander scale.  It is housed in a building that was constructed for our nation’s bentenial celebration in 1876.  The grand building looks like it belongs on the mall in Washington D.C.  You would never guess that it has a museum for children inside.

Philadelphia had many first class attractions.  I only wish we had arranged to stay longer and see more of them.

In case you haven’t noticed, I have blogged nearly every day this week.  And some days (including today), I have blogged multiple times.  I still have lots of things to post, including Mackenzie’s 3K graduation from last month.  I think I’ll go have a cookie now.

If it’s not obvious, I’m clearly avoiding school-work by blogging.  (I have two more projects to turn in before Tuesday.  One is 75% done and I haven’t started the other.) I’m also considering promoting this blog more to my friends, etc. via facebook and twitter, so I need to populate it with lots of content.

Next week, I’ll be blogging live from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Camden, New Jersey.  Stay tuned . . .