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On Friday, October 1, 2010, I was included in the randomly selected group of 20 runners to meet up and run with Jeff Galloway at Epcot. We were told to meet at the front of Epcot. I had a rental car for this trip, so I drove myself to the meetup. It was still dark when I arrived.

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Upon entering Epcot, we were all given a black RunDisney shirt to put on! I wasted a lot of time trying to decide what to wear 🙂

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RunDisney, I have four words for you – Women’s. Cut. Tech. Shirts! Please! This shirt and the race shirts are like dresses on me. I need shirts that don’t come to my knees!

Jeff and some of the Disney people talked to us a bit before we started out.

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Jeff said he’d be using 2 minute run/30 second walk intervals. Although the application said runners needed to be able to keep a 12 minute/mile pace, I’m pretty sure no one told Jeff. He was running somewhere around 8-8:30 and was overall moving around 10:15-10:30 minutes/mile. It was just too fast for me to keep up, and I really didn’t want to go all out since I had 13.1 miles ahead of me the next night. So, I was in my usual spot at the back of the pack, camera in hand, snapping away at Epcot getting ready for the opening of Food & Wine Festival. I eventually gave up on the run/walk system and just made my way through the two laps we did around World Showcase.

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As we passed the Fountain of Nations, we ran in to someone else who was ready to join in!

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We stopped at the front of World Showcase to pose for a picture. My Canon S3 was the “fancy” camera of the bunch, most were iPhones!

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After we made it back to the front of Epcot, Jeff answered questions, posed for pictures, and gave us all an autographed photo of himself in front of the castle.

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He was extremely gracious and friendly to all of us! As 9 AM approached, we all had to make our way out of the park, but I think all of us were very grateful for the special RunDisney Meetup experience!