The significane of Running Disney

Here’s the deal, I was checking the Run Disney website last night for the hell of it and it turns out that the Disneyland half marathon is set for August 29-August 30, 2014. And that registration will open for it in January 2014 sometime and they will send out an email. I signed up to get the email, but now that I know registration opens in January I will definitely be on the lookout in Jan to sign up. I started reading a little more and it turns out that you can run the 10k on Saturday AND the half marathon on Sunday and then sign up for the Dumbo Double Dare challenge which is basically saying that you are running them both and get another medal. So 3 medals, two challenges and instantly my brain was like, Challenged Accepted. I don’t ever think I will get over How I Met Your Mother and those classic lines, they will live with me forever. So yes, Challenge Accepted. It instantly put a little bit of a scared feeling in my tummy running both a 10k one day AND a half the next but that is what I love, if it makes you a little scared but you want to do it, you probably should do it, right?

If I am going to spend all the money and time and fly to Disney to run I might as well go for the gusto and come home with 3 medals, no matter what the cost and yes, there will be a stupid cost considering these races aren’t cheap. But yes, the truest sign that this is probably something you want to do. Even now, having the Run Disney screen open on the other page of my computer monitor and I see it, I literally have to fight back tears in my eyes, I want it so bad. I get giddy and shaky and tearful just thinking about what that would actually mean to me to accomplish something like that. I can’t even put into words why it would mean so much to me. I really don’t know why, but every time I even think about it I cry. That probably means this is something I have to do, come hell or high water, because it is THAT important to me. I don’t have the words to possibly being to articulate how important this is. I think it’s much like the ridiculous combination of importance I placed on going to Vegas to see Pink last February. For whatever reason this just symbolizes something life altering for me.

I have always loved Disney. I am a giant Disney kid at heart. After my dad died my entire family which just consisted of my mom, my 3 sisters and my one brother in law at the time, went to Disneyland together for the first time as a kind of celebration. Basically we had all always wanted to go but my dad was too afraid of his weight to ever go. It was a great time and I fell in love with it. But I was very overweight. You’ve seen the pictures. After that, we went once again as a family, this time with an expanded family of my niece and another future brother in law. I was still fat. And then 2 years ago, the ENTIRE family went, all 10 of us, Chris included and we had an amazing time. I was still fat. Get the point. I have fluctuated my weight for 10 years but it always seemed that I could never make it to Disneyland healthy and active. I was always overweight and out of breath the entire time, thinking it would have been such a more enjoyable experience if I were in better shape.

Of course couple this with all the emotion I have wrapped up in running and my own self-doubt of being an actual runner and you’ve got a recipe for massive tears my friends. And yes, just looking at the Run Disney website and thinking about that accomplishment brings these feelings bubbling up in side of me. Like I know, that after having accomplished that, and starring at my Disney medals that they will be something I will cherish for my entire life. I don’t know what it is about Disney but for some reason it’s just that crazy important to me. I guess it’s because it is the pinnacle of races in my eyes. The cream of the crop and that is what I want to be. That is where I never really allowed myself to believe I could be. That was something that other people did and accomplished, certainly not me.

So as I stare at the screen I know in my heart that I have to make this happen. That just signing up for the race in January will be a big first step for me. And that come hell or high water, this girl is going to be in Disneyland August 29 & 30, 2014 to run. And guess what, I won’t be fat. I will finally accomplish a 10 year goal of going to Disneyland and not being fat. Seriously, maybe that is what it is. When we went to Disneyland the first time it was BEFORE I ever started weight watchers. It was before I ever attempted to lose weight and start down this path. And I promised myself somewhere in the back of my head on that very trip that someday I would come back to Disneyland and be healthy and thin. I think it’s because that very first trip my sister was thin and with her husband, my brother in law, and they took all these cute pictures together, and there I was this 23 year old FAT lonely girl who wanted that. And that image has stuck with me for 10 plus years. And for some reason it was always out of my grasps. Sure, I went back to Disneyland after that and I even brought my husband with me and took pictures (they were not cute photos, they were of a sad overweight woman who did not care one bit how she looked and her husband whom I felt for sorry for because he was holding hands with this woman who he didn’t belong with) You can see the photos somewhere on this blog as proof. I posted them right before I went to Maui in June of this year.

Anyway, in the back of my mind I kind of had this promise to myself that someday I would do Disney as I first envisioned it as a bright eyed, sad lonely 23 year old. And I’ve failed to realize this dream in the subsequent 11 years. Maybe this is the reason that tears come to my eyes when I think of running Disney. Because not only am I blowing my dream of going to Disney thin out of the water, but I’m topping it with something I could not have even imagined at 23, I am going to run. I am going to Run Disney. That is beyond even what I thought possible when I first walked onto what would become hollowed Disney ground for me.

Do you know what else I love? I love that I am so confident in myself and in my knowledge that this is it for me that I am not even batting an eye about signing up and paying hundreds of dollars to run races the end of August of next year. It hasn’t even crossed my mind that I would not be able to do it. I am that resolved that this is my lifestyle and therefor in August of 2014 I would be 100% ready and able to crush this dream I’ve secretly, privately kept guarded in my heart for over 10 years. I think that is why I am so freaking emotional over it.

It’s not like that will be the first half marathon I have ever run. In fact by August of 2014 I suspect I will have lots of races under my belt, but it might very well become the most significant race of my life for me because of all the emotional baggage that I think it will erase for me. 11 years is a long time to carry around scars you didn’t even know existed. I have a lot of feelings of self-doubt and anger wrapped up into that. I have weird feelings of my dad mixed in there, with feelings of sadness and loneliness and feelings of failure because despite having lost weight many times in 10 years, I never was able to walk into Disneyland anything less than like 190 pounds or so. That’s just a guess. Last time was clearly around my 220 pound mark.

I think in some ways, as much as I adore Disney and would never associate it with anything negative, it does have a certain connotation in my head of failure for me. It represents one of the failures of my life that I have lived with for 11 years and I’d love to change that image. It would be an amazing relief to me to blow past my simple goal of being thinner when I go there and crush it by running a half marathon.

I wish I could put onto paper the intensity or fire I am feeling right now and how much this is affecting me thinking about this. It’s passion. I have so much passion. I have talked about that before, but I wish I could express to you this minute how much I am literally changing and growing this very second realizing how significant and important this race is to me. Finally unlocking the mystery of why I get tears in my eyes when I think about running in Disneyland is profound to me. I get it. I am finally seeing why it is so fundamentally important to me. Thank you blog for allowing me to journal out my feelings live as I am exploring what is really going on inside of me.

The written word is one of my best therapies (aside from running of course!) and it allows me to talk out what is going on. This is exactly why I blog, right here, right now, today. This blog entry makes me think it’s all worthwhile because I can discover things about me that I long bury and suppress and fully explore things like why I start to cry every time the topic of running Disney comes up.

I have somehow managed to associate Disneyland, a place I love to its core with this concept of my greatest failure in life. My inability to love myself enough, consistently enough to maintain my health and fitness. And running Disney proves that I have finally really changed. That is how much significance I have placed on it. Insane how our brains work so twistedly at times and how it can take such a long time for us to open up our eyes and see what is really going on.

I am going to run that race because it means that much to me, and I am going to proudly wear that finishers medal around my neck and take a photo and that is going to be one of the greatest proudest moments of my life; something I will treasure forever. Because I finally believe in myself and can erase a small part of my past mistakes. It’s my do-over in life and I am so ready for that. Crossing that finish line will be like getting a second chance to experience Disney the way I envisioned as a naïve overweight 23 year old. I can only imagine how freeing that is going to finally feel.

I truly had no idea when I started this journey a year ago that I would end up exactly where I am today. It never occurred to me that I’d be sitting here writing about running in Disneyland. This is so ridiculously exciting and gives me so much hope for what else is out there that I haven’t even begun to think of yet. In a years’ time what am I going to be writing about that I couldn’t envision right now? That is exhilarating. I am so proud of the bravery I have learned to embrace and the belief in myself that I can do these things.

I have no doubt that in years’ time from now I will still be at this and journaling this entire journey. I just have that much faith in myself now. And that is such an amazing thing!