SAFD: similar to others, I was never a runner, always hated running. I ran as part of sports when I was a kid but was always a sprinter. I also wasnāt a huge Disney fan as a kid. I lived about 1.5 hours away and went a few times, and watched the early Renaissance movies, but thatās it. I worked at Universal CityWalk in college so I went there a lot more often.
I was, however, always a Star Wars fan, and went to Star Wars Weekends a few times in early 2000s, and again in 2011 when they reopened Star Tours. Around that time I had moved to my current town which was only 20-30 minutes from Disney. I also frequented Pleasure Island a lot in the mid 2000s until it closed in 2008. I also bought some of the Florida resident 4-day ticket deals, and was considering an AP, but my ex-husband was not a fan.
Then we got divorced, and I bought an AP before Star Wars Weekends in 2012 and went every single weekend. (This continued through the end of SWW in 2015.) Later that year, Disney bought Lucasfilm, solidifying that I would never get rid of my AP.
As for running, my first runDisney race was, big surprise, the first Star Wars 5k in 2016. I knew nothing about rD and still hated running but Star Wars! I became familiar with rD when my friend started doing the Princess half in memory of her daughter who was stillborn. Some other friends started doing Princess in 2020, and I had just had a baby so was in no shape to join them. Fast forward two years later, Princess weekend came back and so did they, so I did the 5k with rhem (meaning I walked most of the race and ran a bit at the end). Then we started talking about doing a 10k. We werenāt able to sign up for Marathon Weekend, so we signed up for the Princess 10k in 2023. I knew I needed to train in order to not be swept. I found the Galloway method, as well as this board (I was already posting mostly in TPAS and the
DCL boards), and started running in earnest in January 2023. And to my surprise, I realized I actually liked running, and even more, I loved runDisney. A year later, Iām signed up for the Princess Half and want to do the 2025 marathon on my birthday.