Running Team: Dave Miller, Holly Miller, Jacque Kelly
Date: April 17, 2016
My daughters challenged me to recover from cancer, get in shape and run this race with them. So I did. We drove to Orlando’s Walt Disney World for the Inaugural Star Wars 10K. The day before the race after checking in we enjoyed the runners exhibition hall and posed in some neat Star Wars scenes with robot BB-8 (Photo#1) and in the Death Star. We woke at 4am to arrive in the staging area by 4:45am. To beat the brutal Florida sun the race began at 5:30am. Most of the runners wore some type of Star Wars costume. The 10K had 12,174 participants. Since there was so many runners we treated the race as a fun run. It was still dark when the race began but the course was well lighted as route took us through several parts of Disney World. At every mile marker we stopped briefly and posed with Star Wars characters, Rebel characters, R2D2, Chewbacca, Dark Vader (Photo#3) and storm troopers. At the finish line we proudly received our medal and free snack box and bottle of power aide. After the race we got to pose in several elaborate Star Wars scenes with Jabba the Hut (Photo#5) , Darth Maul, the metal Hans Solo and other backdrops. Rosie was there to cheer us on.
The next day we returned to Disneyland and had a surprise Disney Birthday Party for Holly (Photo#6) who was turning 23. Daisy Duck crashed our party. We explored the park and I searched for the cast of the Yeti’s footprints donated by Josh Gates at the Expedition Everest Ride at Disney Animal Kingdom. We enjoyed the animals and riding rides.
