Disney’s Expedition Everest Challenge

Heidi and I got to Animal Kingdom around 7:30 p.m. hoping to be able to exchange our race shirts for a smaller size, but we had no luck. No smaller sizes were available.We relaxed in the car for a while, put on our bibs, and then went to get some pictures taken. It was pretty crowded, but the energy level was high. There were two snow machines pumping out snow on everyone and the DJ was blasting music and talking to the crowd.The race officially started at 10 p.m. but we were in corral C so we started at 10:12. The first mile was in the parking lot, but it was still exciting. They had speakers out with music and animal sounds. It was also amusing to see the other runners. One guy was dressed as Tarzan and had a stuffed monkey making tons of sounds. In this mile was the first obstacle – jumping over hay bales. Pretty easy.

The next mile was inside the park. We ran towards the Tree of Life which was lit up, and then through Asia, backstage for a bit, and then past Kali River Rapids and Everest. We then went backstage and ran past the back of Everest, coming to the second obstacle – tires. There was a short line for this but we got through it pretty fast.

The third mile was all backstage and not much excitement other than waiting for the finish line to come. My knee was hurting pretty bad by this point, but I kept running. We came to the last obstacle – crawling under a net. I passed by this one because of my knee and crossed the finish line.

We were handed a clue card and were back off to the front of the park to get our next clue. For the clues, each was a direction of the compass. We were running all around the park getting more clues until we finally had to use all the clues to figure out a puzzle giving us the final answer needed to cross the finish line. We had about 3/4 of a mile to run to the finish line, so we hobbled there and got our medals!

Final 5k split: 37:11

Total Time: 1:27:17