Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, there were two Disney parks with Star Wars race weekends, one light and one dark. Courageous heroes who completed races at both weekends were rewarded with the coveted Kessel Run medal. Alas, tragedy struck when one race weekend was canceled indefinitely. To preserve the honor of winning a medal featuring the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, runDisney instituted a virtual half marathon in place of the light side race. And so, the tradition lives on.
Which is my very over the top way of saying that Will and I decided to do the Kessel Run Challenge as part of our 10 year anniversary Star Wars Weekend extravaganza. We love Star Wars but we also love getting two extra runDisney medals for $80.
A virtual race, if you've never done one before, is where you race by yourself for a specified distance. Most of them are pretty chill and encourage people to break up the distance over multiple runs if you need to. It's a great way to get some fun bling without the expense of traveling. The Kessel Run Challenge involves running the Star Wars Virtual Half Marathon as well as the Star Wars Rival Run Half Marathon or Challenge. I had a 14 mile and a 12.5 mile run in my training schedule for the challenge so it was really a no brainer for me to add on the Kessel Challenge.
So I picked a date, printed out my bib and set out. Before I go any further, I want to say a lot of things went wrong with this run. I decided to bump my 12.5 mile run up to 13.1 for the virtual since I scheduled a Disney day the day before my 14 mile run (another bad decision but more on that in my March running recap). And when that 12.5 mile day came around, we had near record breaking high temperatures. And since I needed to do back to back runs for my challenge training, I didn't have a lot of wiggle room in moving my long run to a different day. So I knew going into the run that it was not going to be the most fun.
I also had picked up some Nuun tablets to try out. During Princess weekend, I realized that I really need to work on my electrolyte strategy so I decided to try Nuun. I really like using whole foods in my nutrition but I didn't think that carrying around a bag of pickles to eat while I run sounded like a good plan. I wanted to take Nuun out with me for this run to see how I handled it. You can probably guess where this is going.
I felt ok during the beginning of the run but around mile 6, I started to feel really worn out. I used my heat racing strategy and took an extra walk break when I felt like I needed it once per mile. I also stopped into my church for a bit of ac and a refill of my water bottle. Sorry to everyone who had to see my sweaty self right before church service! I was moving more slowly but finally I was headed home.
But more issues started around mile 9. I began to feel nauseous so I switched from my 60/30 intervals to a 45/45 interval. That usually helps me keep moving and maintain a pretty good pace but it didn't help too much. I ended up walking the entire last mile and stopping several times feeling like I was going to be sick. The Nuun definitely did not agree with me!
But in the end, I made it home! This race was my slowest half marathon yet but I persevered through a lot of tough situations and learned somethings that did not work for me. What did work out great was my hat! It was such a nice shade for my face as the sun came up. I do have prescription sunglasses but I haven't figured out what to do for races where you start in the dark but then it gets sunny. I don't want to lug around two pairs of glasses for a half marathon. I hope this hat will help solve that problem!
And now for the bling! Tada!
Oh, wait, never mind. If you run just the virtual half, runDisney mails you your medal, usually after the race period is over. Since we are running the Kessel Challenge, we pick up our virtual medal at the Star Wars Rival Run Expo. Once I get my pretty R2D2 medal, I'll put up a lovely picture of it here.
Even though this run was really hard, I'm glad I did this race. It's always a good thing to push yourself to meet your goals. Plus the R2D2 medal is my favorite design of the medals for Star Wars this year. It looks so good!
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