Preparations

The editor keeps prompting… tell your story… so, I guess, here goes…

Early Preparing of Me

The latest trip to Disney started about 11 1/2 months before the actual trip. Squirrel has harped and harped ever since I did my first Run Disney race in 2014 that she wanted to some day be able to do a Disney race. Well… I was reading the rundisneyrun facebook page and I saw that you could pre-book with a travel agent if you booked before March somethingth and be guaranteed a bib for the Fairytale challenge. I’ve wanted to try one of the Disney Challenge Series’s so… I started to do some digging.

You had to book with a travel agent, you had to book at least so many days, you had to pre-pay the bibs, you had to blah blah blah.

Bear and I talked. I asked around to a few travel agents. Several never answered me. Thanks…

Bear and I talked some more.

And we booked the trip.

Squirrel would get to do her Run Disney race. I would get to do my challenge. We could maybe make this trip less nerve wracking and scary than the last one (oh the lessons learned).

I had already started to try to lose weight because I knew that I needed to be as strong as I possibly could for Bear when the time comes that I need to be my strongest. I started to go to the gym with regularity. I started to walk outside when it wasn’t horrible outside. I started to seriously consider the implications.

I looked up the Run Disney training schedule for the challenge. It strongly suggested that you be running at least 6 months before you started the training. SO I back calculated and kind of flipped out a little at how soon that 6 months was going to come. I started to pre-train run in the mornings. I joined Weight Watchers (what has now become known as WW) and started to pay close attention to what I put into my body and what I wanted to get out of it.

I was able to do a 17 minute mile on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I jumped off the treadmill sweating like a horse (pigs don’t sweat) to shower and change for work. I always felt pretty decent when I left the gym. I knew I had a LOT of work to do.

And work I did. I started to tinker with run walk run times. I was able to run 15 seconds with 60 seconds walk when I started.

I started to lose weight. I can (and apparently shouldn’t) not follow my doctor’s explicit instructions that I could safely subsist on only 0 point foods. You can’t. Don’t try. 0 point foods are there to help you through your day without starving. The beauty of WW (never ever thought I would say this) is that you can eat whatever you want as long as you pay close attention to portions and as long as you track what you eat and stay within your daily/weekly point allocation.