After a frankly rough 2026 runDisney Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend, I am thrilled to provide the following spoiler: my 2026 Princess Half Marathon Weekend was lovely.
Oddly enough, though, it was precisely because my WDW Marathon Weekend was rough that I was able to ultimately manage the threatened return of my pre-race panic. Turns out I was on the verge of falling into the most common blunder, which was to believe – even a little – that any mental health journey would be linear. What a dummy! But sometimes you can’t really plot your path until you’ve turned around and seen it stretched out behind you, you know?
Are you similar afflicted by anxiety? Let’s discuss!
HOW MY runDISNEY ANXIETY JOURNEY STARTED
I’ve talked at length about how pre-race nerves have sometimes gotten to me. It’s not the race itself; it’s all the surrounding potentialities that get me on edge. What if I sleep through my alarm? What if I get sick? I could forget my bib or eat the wrong thing or lose my ID or put on the wrong shoes or or or or or
And then I don’t sleep and get the shakes and upset my stomach and it’s almost enough to ruin the magic entirely. But! Eventually the problem got so bad I couldn’t ignore it anymore – which sounds like a curse but in fact was a blessing. It forced me to actually face the issue, and with a combination of research and practice I was able to conquer my anxiety entirely.
Haha, just kidding! That’s not how mental health works.
MY runDISNEY ANXIETY REARS ITS UGLY HEAD AGAIN
I did manage to get a solid handle on it over the course of several runDisney race weekends, however, which is why the 2026 Walt Disney World Marathon Weekend caught me off guard. For reasons I can’t fully put my finger on, I had a bad feeling about things all weekend. Well, that and I ate something that didn’t agree with me, just like my anxiety suggested I might! I hate it when my anxiety is right.
I have a whole race recap post about it, but the TLDR is that I wound up feeling nauseated the night before the race. Initially this had me in a tailspin, but somewhere in there I straightened out and accepted what would be would be. And then I woke up feeling okay. I headed to the start line aware that I might have to pull myself from the race… but I finished!
HOW IT’S GOING
Which brings us to Princess Half Marathon Weekend. I made the (in retrospect, kinda dumb) decision to try a different pasta dish than my usual safe spaghetti and meatballs. Immediately afterward I felt fine, but ALSO, I felt panicked. What if trying something new came back to bite me? Why had I done that?? How could I have been so stupid???
And yet I was able to remind myself: if your stomach does wind up upset, it’s something you’ve faced before. You’ve stared down uncertainty. You made the race work anyway. And if you hadn’t, you were ready to accept your fate and take the DNS/F. Why would this time be any different?
Turns out I had nothing to worry about – my dinner sat fine, and I had a great race. I’m sure a lot of that was simply down to a slightly different pasta dish being nothing to freak out about in the first place. But it sure did help that I was able to slap down uncertainty with past precedent.
WHERE IT’S HEADED
They say that with age comes wisdom. This implies that there is something about aging that naturally brings wisdom with it. I say nah; you’ve just done more stuff and had more things happen to you… providing you’ve done stuff and let things happen.
Sure, you could argue that I’m splitting hairs. But there was a difference of about two months between WDW Marathon Weekend and Princess Half Marathon Weekend, so I’m not sure aging was the key here so much as the fact that now I’ve experienced a food-borne near miss and have an idea of what that means for me. From where I’m sitting, knowledge really is power!
The bad news is that this implies that the only way I can gather more knowledge armor is by… continuing to do things and learning from what happens. The good news is that the more things I do, the more I will learn from what happens! So I guess the best course of action is to just keeping running races, right? Until I really do beat back my anxiety for good?
I’M GLAD YOU’RE HERE, runDISNEY BUDDY
JK; as I noted at the beginning, mental health simply isn’t linear. I love runDisney so much, though, that it pushes me to keep trying. I love my race weekends and Disney time with my friends and putting together race costumes and writing up blog posts about everything I do. Thank you so much for being here and reading this. (Needless to say, my Princess Weekend race recaps, restaurant reviews, and more are on deck!)
It’s true that I will never completely beat anxiety – but I aim to make sure anxiety never completely beats me either. I leave you with the sagacious words of the Klingon therapist:
Don’t forget, you can follow FRoA on Threads @fairestrunofall and on Instagram @fairestrunofall. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment or email fairestrunofall@gmail.com. See ya real soon!