Star Wars Half Marathon Expo & 10K 2018

I love Star Wars. I would do movie marathons as a kid and watch all three of the originals back to back during summer days. I wanted to be Luke Skywalker. I don’t know if I had unrealistic expectations for this series, with all of its potential, but after doing it for the last three years, I’m not as disappointed anymore. I really don’t expect much from there series.

I think there are a few key things to manage on your expectations when doing this series.

You won’t get to meet a ton of Disney owned characters. Typically the race will bring in different characters for each race. With Star Wars Weekends being previously held at Hollywood Studios, you’d think they’d take advantage of their depth of options. You’ll see the exact same characters regardless if you do the 5K, 10K or Half marathon. They do let the 501st come out for the 10K and the Half. While neat, it’s not quite the same.
The medals for some reason aren’t as inspired and certainly not as original as other series. Case in point, I found the medal design from last year’s Half taken from the logo on my son’s coloring book. No joke!
It’s always been the hottest race of all the WDW races. Its seems to be much more brutal on the Half.

The Expo

I will say after three the last three series fo transitioning to the new building, they’ve got the expo figured out and it so much better. You no longer wait out in the elements for hours on end. There is plenty of room to shop, the checkout line moves quicker and the whole experience is better. They took the success at Disneyland and scaled it up. The room also has given them the space to really showcase some displays and show off the exclusive merch. Ive throughly enjoyed the changes that Run Disney have made.

At this point the statues have become a thing. It was first introduced for the 25th anniversary of the Marathon in January. Then a 10th anniversary statue came out for the Princess weekend in February. These were pretty cool, but I had to pass so I wouldn’t turn into a collector of them.

As always, it was great to see Jeff and Barb. We talked about Boston and planned to getting together to run the Half together.

In the past the Photopass people had an exclusive booth set up to do a nice shot of you. They recently moved away from this and have replaced it with either characters or special backdrops. Be sure to get your pic. Its the only time that you will see it!

The 10K

I was excited to run with Nick, who was completing his first 10K. Its fun and rewarding to see the younger members of our team grow and do more and longer races. They are certainly braver than I was at that age! It was also great to see Frank out running again. He had been recovering from a knee injury and this was the first one where he was fully back to running.