Disneyland Half Marathon Trip Report: Health and Fitness Expo, Goofy's Kitchen, Storytellers Cafe and the Rest

Raisin Bread and I took Friday off from work and flew to LAX that  morning on my favorite airline, Virgin America. 

Who's going to Disneyland? We are! 

This will be the last post of my trip report, so it might be a little longer than usual. If you missed my race recaps of the Disneyland 10K or Half Marathon, check them out here:

- Dumbo Double Dare Part 1: Inaugural Disneyland 10K - Race Recap

- Dumbo Double Dare Part 2: Disneyland Half Marathon 2013 - Race Recap

After picking up our car, we stopped off in Torrance for lunch at Mitsuwa on the way to Anaheim. We both had ramen from Santouka despite it being in the 90s that day. We don't normally have easy access to good, authentic Japanese food where we live, so we needed to take advantage of being close to Torrance. 

Spicy miso ramen with pork cheek meat

After lunch, we continued our drive to Anaheim and checked in to our hotel to take as short nap before heading to the Disneyland Half Marathon Health and Fitness Expo at the Disneyland Hotel.

Image Credit: Cruising Goddess

I am glad we arrived at the time we did because I had been following the progress of the Expo earlier in the day and it seemed to be mass chaos. One of the people I follow on Instagram said it took four hours to pick up all of their stuff. Crazy!

By that time, bib pick up was a breeze. The only problem I had was that they couldn't find the stickers for my bag check, but I wasn't planning to check anything anyway so it wasn't a big deal to me.

We then went up to the Expo Hall to pick up our t-shirts and gear bags and walk around the booths. 

Disneyland 10K, Half Marathon and Dumbo Double Dare T-shirts

Ali Vincent from The Biggest Loser at the Expo

We eventually met up with the sister and brother-in-law in the afternoon to take photos and have dinner together. 

For dinner, we went to Goofy's Kitchen, which was also located at the Disneyland Hotel.

Goofy's Kitchen is a character dining restaurant with a buffet. I helped myself to barbecue ribs, mac and cheese, a variety of salads and mashed potatoes, followed by a variety of desserts. 

With character dining, Disney characters come to your table and you can talk to them (if they are a face character) and take lots of pictures with them. These are just a few of the characters we got to see. 

Us with Goofy, Pluto, Minnie Mouse and Belle

Brother-in-law's birthday had been a few days prior but we were able to celebrate together this night! 

Happy birthday, Chris!

Following dinner, we walked around Downtown Disney for a little while before heading back to our hotel.

On Saturday, my parents decided to drive down to Anaheim to have lunch with us after I finished the 10K. We met at Storytellers Cafe in the Grand Californian Hotel. Although they don't typically have character dining during lunch time, we ran into Dale and a few others while we were there.

I forgot to take pictures of my food, which I didn't think was great anyway. I ordered the jumbo shrimp cocktail to share and a burger. 

After lunch, we showed my parents around the hotel before saying good bye. For the afternoon, sister, brother-in-law and I hung out by the pool and went on the awesome monorail slide. There are actually three slides: a baby one, a medium one and the big slide. It was so nice to be in the water after my 10K that morning! 

Disneyland Hotel pool

For dinner that night, we wound up back at the Grand Californian Hotel at Napa Rose. We changed our dinner plans at the last minute and couldn't get a new reservation anywhere else we wanted to eat. Napa Rose had lounge seating that was available, so we went that route.

Although the food was good, the service was painfully slow. It took us about 2 hours to get out of there, which was way past what we were planning for. Sister, Raisin Bread and I were all going to have to wake up super early the next day to make it to the half marathon!

I created a mish mash of a meal: I ordered the portobello mushroom bisque "cappuccino" with brandied thyme froth, the salad of summer with peaches, hickory smoked pheasant and french green beans with California almond vinaigrette and shared a side of truffled "mac & cheese" orecchiette pasta with parmigiano-reggiano. I especially loved the soup and salad. The mac & cheese put me over the edge of fullness, which is not ideal for a meal before a half marathon. Oh well.

On Sunday after the race, we headed up to the South Bay to Raisin Bread's old stomping grounds. We had lunch at a place we used to frequent quite regularly: OB's in El Porto. 

Not much has changed there: still has free peanuts and their stir-fry is still amazing! 

We decided to stay the night at my parents' house so we could spend some more time with them. We headed there in afternoon and took a long nap before dinner. More Japanese food was requested by Raisin Bread and me for dinner, and we went to Tampopo in Gardena. 

I ordered the ten zaru soba. The tempura batter wasn't that great, but the soba was delish. Sigh. I miss authentic Japanese food when I'm here in DC. 

The next morning, we left early to catch our flight back to DC.

Well, that was my trip to LA and The OC. It was fun and I feel like I achieved a lot, my first double, my second half marathon and my fourth 10K. I am also glad that I got to spend some quality time with the family!

Until next time, California!

Santouka
Mitsuwa Marketplace
21515 South Western Avenue
Torrance, CA 90501

Goofy's Kitchen
Disneyland Hotel
1150 Magic Way
Anaheim, CA 92802

Storytellers Cafe
Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
1600 Disneyland Drive
Anaheim, CA 92803

Napa Rose
Disney's Grand Californian Hotel & Spa
1600 Disneyland Drive
Anaheim, CA 92803

OB's Pub & Grill
3610 North Highland Avenue
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266 

Tampopo Restaurant
15462 South Western Avenue
Gardena, CA 90249

Dumbo Double Dare Part 2: Disneyland Half Marathon 2013 - Race Recap

It was another early start for me on the morning of the Disneyland Half Marathon. This time, however, I was joined by Raisin Bread for his first half marathon! 

If you missed my race recap of the Disneyland 10K, you can check it out here:

- Dumbo Double Dare Part 1: Inaugural Disneyland 10K - Race Recap

We woke up around 4 am to get changed, eat and head to our corral by 5 am. Only we were rejected once we got there. We were told that corral D was full. How can that be possible if you know how many people are in each corral? That was pretty frustrating, and we were relegated to corral E. Poo. 

Corral A started at 5:30 am and we weren't off until 35 minutes later, partly because we were in the wrong corral. 

We were off none the less. 

Image credit: Cruising Goddess

We started going south on Disneyland Drive to Katella Avenue and entered California Adventure after about a mile and a half. Along the way, we saw some cool floats for The Incredibles and Toy Story. 

The route through the parks was similar to the 10K, only in a different order. For this reason, I didn't wind up taking very many photographs, but we did stop for a couples shot at Mickey's Fun Wheel.

There's the Tower of Terror! We also ran through Cars Land again. This time it was so early that the lights were still on, which I loved! I also loved running down Main Street again towards Sleeping Beauty's Castle.

We exited Disneyland through the Castle and hit the streets of Anaheim. We would be out on the streets for a while, but we still had plenty to look at and there was tons of spectator support. There must have been at least 10 different high school bands and cheerleading squads out there to keep us pumped up. It was much appreciated! I couldn't believe it when I saw the cheerleaders from my high school alma mater, West High School, near mile 12!

There was a stretch of the route with tons of vintage and muscle cars out on display and with their owners honking their horns and cheering us on (sometimes jeering us on all in good fun).

After mile 8, we ran around the Honda Center, the home of the Mighty Ducks.

Image credit: Cruising Goddess

Then we arrived at Angels Stadium. This was one of the parts of the course I was really looking forward to.

It was so cool to run through the tunnel, around the field and past the dugout. There was also a TON of spectators sitting in the stands. Pretty cool!

The rest of the course wasn't too exciting. Both Raisin Bread and I were getting a little uncomfortable from the heat and feeling some pain, so we walked a bunch at this point.

Somehow we were still in good spirits by mile 10.

We picked up the pace again around mile 12 and found it in ourselves to finish strong! 

Image credit: Cruising Goddess

We grabbed our refreshments and I claimed my Dumbo medal for completing the Dumbo Double Dare and my Coast to Coast medal for doing one runDisney half marathon in Anaheim and one in Orlando in the same calendar year.

Bling #2, #3 and #4 of 4

Sister was only about 20 minutes behind us, so we waited for her to get a snap together.

I achieved my goal of PR-ing by 5 minutes! Yay! Not bad for having just run a 10K the day before. 

Place	Name	Bib	Age	Div Place	Gender Place	5k Split	10k Split	15k Split	Clock Time	Net Time	Hometown
9791	IRENE STIRLING	23247	33	1084	5435	42:19	1:20:10	2:05:49	3:38:03	3:02:22	ARLINGTON, VA

Here are the split times from my Polar watch:

Mile 1: 11:40

Mile 2: 12:05

Mile 3: 15:00

Mile 4: 12:20

Mile 5: 11:05 *fastest mile

Mile 6: 12:15

Mile 7: 13:15

Mile 8: 14:40

Mile 9: 14:45

Mile 10: 14:20

Mile 11: 17:00

Mile 12: 14:25

Mile 13: 13:10

It was a fun race, especially since I got to run alongside the hubster, and I can't wait to figure out what my next big race will be. 

Stay tuned for the non-race aspects of my Disneyland Half Marathon weekend! 

Disneyland Half Marathon: Sneak Peek

We did it! And with half marathon PRs all around! Since I'm so excited about sharing all the fun that was had this weekend, I can't resist giving you a little sneak peek at our half marathon finish! 

Raisin Bread, me and sister (as Chip) after the half marathon