The Show Goes On: Tower of Terror 10-miler

I just completed my first runDisney event last night... on a bike. In addition to working with the sales team at the Expo on Friday and the kids races on Saturday morning (the Diaper Dash was adorable!), I had the awesome opportunity to be a member of the 'SAG team' for Saturday night's villains themed race that started and ended at Disney's Hollywood Studios. There were some GREAT costumes (click link for photos) and the race didn't start until 10pm which made for a long day, but getting to interact with the guests was so much fun and reminded me of my days working at the Magic Kingdom.

The responsibility of the SAG team is to ride at the end of the race and encourage guests who are falling below the required 16min per mile pace to pick it up. We have to have minimum pace requirement in order to open the roads back up on time in accordance with Florida Highway Patrol. There were 2 'major' SAG points along the course where if guests weren't at the minimum pace we had to pull them off the course and take them to the finish line where they received food, water etc and still got to take home one of the fancy ToT medals for participating. The great part about it is that I got to see the whole course and I didn't have to run it! The gears and chain on my bike started acting up before the race even started and I was nervous that I was going to have to stay back. I finally got the chain back on, but it never did feel like it was right and it kept rubbing on a piece of metal. I couldn't change gears for fear that it would fall off yet again so I just pushed up the hills at the highest level and went slow, thank goodness I was able to make it! Needless to say, after 3 hours on a bike I could not feel my booty lol

After the race we got to go checkout the Villains Bash inside Hollywood Studios. They had DJ Steve (who has become one of my favorite Disney DJ's from other events at the sports complex) there and he was spinning the hits and pumping up the tired and sleepy crowd. I saw Maleficent, Captain Hook, and Jafar (there were probably more that I missed). A few of us bikers and interns were able to ride a couple attractions before mentally and physically crashing. We rode Tower of Terror (my fav!), Rockin Roller Coaster, and tried Toy Story Mania for the first time. Toy Story Mania is like Buzz Lightyear on steroids. You're in a vehicle, wearing 3D glasses, which takes you around to different screens and at those screens are different arcade game scenarios. Your objective is to hit as many of the targets as possible to score points. It keeps you moving so fast through the different scenes that you barely have a moment to breathe until it's on to the next one. It's a good thing that was our last attraction because I was physically and mentally exhausted after the excitement. I scored 128,500, not bad for my first go at it but I placed 4th in our group of 8.

There is another runDisney event coming up in November, the Wine & Dine half marathon which is themed around the Epcot Food & Wine festival. I can't wait to help out with that one too!