runDisney Springtime Surprise 2026: Springtime Surprise 10K Recap
Another day, another race!! This morning at 5 a.m. we ran the 10K portion of runDisney’s 2026 Springtime Surprise race weekend.
Yesterday morning things were already super busy when I got to the main staging area at around 3:15, so today, out of curiosity, I left 10 or 15 minutes earlier and parked at closer to 2:45 a.m. Once I got through security and past the last proper bathroom, there were holding us until exactly 3 a.m., and which point I did a little speed walk to staging and hopped right into the Pooh line before it got too crazy.
Then I did Pain & Panic, Monsters Inc., and Lilo & Stitch pretty quickly and was done the pre-race characters, so I headed over to gEar Check to drop off my stuff, saw some friends, and wandered into corral.
I started with the first wave of A and skipped the first few characters, including Piglet & Rabbit (got a good pic with them yesterday) and Alice and the Mad Hatter, which put me into that sweet spot where you’re not going for a PR but you’re ahead of the character-focused people and everything is pretty much walk up.
At that point I skipped Dug and Carl & Russell since I’ve seen them lots, and Mirabel & Isabella since they didn’t have PhotoPass with them, but did pretty much everyone else:
Jack Sparrow & Barbosa
Genie & Abu
Eeyore
Minnie in her Kimono in Japan
Miguel
I had it in my head that I wanted to run an about-an-hour race and still grab some pics and that’s pretty much exactly what I did, even thought I took it a little easier as the heat started really creeping up.
Right after we finished, before we got our medals, they gave us Mission cooling towels. They were heaven sent.
If today was any indicator, tomorrow’s 10-miler is going to be steamy!! Today again they were finishing start waves at around 6:20, which means that, particularly if you’re in a later start group, you’re likely to be still running after sunrise when things start to heat up more. Listen to your body and hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
