Darin and I joined the Hogwarts Running Club a while back. He’s Hufflepuff and I am Ravenclaw (Ravenclawesome as we like to call it.) They put on virtual races and the proceeds go to charity. They send out some amazing medals and its a lot of fun. We last participated in the HRC Marathon which is four separate races, one for each house, that total 26.2 miles. It’s been about a month, and I have only done one of them, the 5k. The reason, is I have been trying to stick to my triathlon training which has not called for really long run days. The runs don’t have a schedule so they can be done whenever and I planned to hit them after the triathlon so that I have one focus. They had just announced another one, called The Fantastic Beasts 5k (like the new movie that is in the works). This race, unlike the others has a suggested run date, July 31, Harry Potter’s birthday. We didn’t sign up because I didn’t want to sign up for another one without having completed the other ones yet. I am sucker for medals, but I don’t want to buy them I want to earn them.
Darin and I had planned to get into Orlando, have a quick bite at the hotel and go to bed so that Saturday morning, we could run a 10k and finish one of the runs for the HRC marathon. We got a much later start to the drive up and got stuck in traffic. Once we got there, our friends (who D2 left with the night before) wanted to get dinner. There was no way I was passing up a chance to see my little Byrd when I missed him so much! Needles to say, we did not get to bed but about midnight. I was not running anywhere the next morning and was kinda bummed about it. We would get lots of walking exercise in the parks, but I still really wanted to run. Then, it hit me….. I turned to Darin and said “Wouldn’t it be cool if we ran the Fantastic Beasts 5k on Harry’s Birthday and run all the way to Hogwarts at Universal?!” His eyes lit up, he was sold just as much as I was, but there were two problems. First, we were not even signed up, and more importantly would we even be able to run the next morning if we were at the parks all day. We decided to play it by ear. I am a planner, so this was way out of my comfort zone!
That evening, we got back from the parks fairly early, got showered and had dinner. I had some tummy troubles but otherwise everything went well and I was asleep before 10. Still playing it by ear… I woke up at 5:30, an hour later than I am used to. Dang, I thought for sure he was not going to run. He was up way later than I was making sure our boy got in safe and didn’t sleep well. He stirred and I asked if he still wanted to run. He was on the fence. I knew that one way or another, I was going to run. Maybe not the HRC run, and maybe on the hotel treadmill but I needed to run. I sat up and began to stretch. “Let’s do this, or I will regret it” he said and I jumped up to go get ready. Before we left, I went online and signed us up so that we were official.
We decided to run from the hotel to the park, which I expected to be about a mile and then run to the Harry Potter section as it opened an hour before the rest of the parks for hotel guests. We figured it would be empty enough that we could run at an ok pace and not get in anyone’s way. We would do a nice easy run for 2 minutes and walk for 45 second intervals. We wanted to keep enough energy to get back and walk the parks. We also were not sure how much gas we had in the tank, especially me after the rough night.
We headed out and realized that the path to the parks was not quite a mile and we were too early to get in to the park. We decided to run through as much of City Walk as we could get to since everything was closed. It was awesome! We got some weird looks now and again, and I heard one lady tell her kid we were jogging, when she asked what we were doing. Call it running, call it jogging, call it crazy. I don’t care what anyone calls it. I do it, and I love it.
After circling the Universal globe and every other nook and cranny we could run through, it was time to head to Islands of Adventure. I was grateful we did the intervals, I was feeling great and especially because it was full of hills and slopes! We had to pause the old Garmin to get in line to get in as there was a small bit of congestion. As soon as that cleared we started off again. I wish I could photograph people’s faces. They just got into the park, it was still cool (as cool as it can be in Florida at 7am) and we were covered in sweat. We kept going into areas where no people were to ensure that we didn’t disrupt anyone. We realized pretty quickly that the Wizarding World was pretty small when you run it.
We headed out to another area of the park that was not open yet but we were allowed in and did some more laps. It was a blast! We kept running until we knew that if we headed to the Harry Potter area, we would hit the 5k mark. As we ran through Hogsmead, one of the employees said to us “Are you guys exercising?!” “Yup”, we said with a chuckle. She grinned ear to ear and said “I think that’s great!” It really made my morning. Some of the other employees looked on and smiled too. They were really cool about the whole thing. Just as the Garmin hit the mark, we were in front of Hogwarts. Perfect timing. We finished the Fantastic Beasts 5k on Harry Potters birthday in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal’s Islands of Adventure!! I was so geeked up! You can’t get much better than that!