Do you have advice on dealing with the crowds and keeping my pace at the Disney half marathon?

I ran Disney in 2005 and was overwhelmed by the crowds. I ended up darting around at the start and used up alot of energy. I need a good race strategy that considers the crowds. I would like to have a better experience when I return in Jan 08.Do you have advice on dealing with the crowds and keeping my pace at the Disney half marathon?
If you start closer to the front you'll get a better start than starting in the back. The runners in front want a good start too. You won't have to dart around the slower runners. Don't get caught up in the faster pace though. Run your own pace. Good Luck.Do you have advice on dealing with the crowds and keeping my pace at the Disney half marathon?
I'd say if you're talking about the spectators standing too close to the road then run in the middle of the road except when you come to an aid station and then make sure you get water or you'll pay later by dehydrating. If you mean the runners being bunched together make sure you try to line up with your appropriate pace runners so faster runners won't be trying to run over you to get where they belong. I've been in 10K races with 30,000+ and there's a crowd around you the whole race and it is stressful trying to run a good time. Good luck.
I haven't run Disney yet, though I'm looking forward to trying in the future. My sister has run the Disney marathon twice and finds the crowds to be a huge rush. Personally, I'm in your camp .... I don't like large crowds and I find it hard to focus.





Since races don't allow headphones for safety reasons, it's hard to block out the crowds. I also find that mentally tuning them out just doesn't work for that length of time. I have a tendency to get a little self-conscious from all the on-lookers and as a result, my pace and my form suffer in the early going.





I'm still working at this myself, so my advice is by no means foolproof. However, what's worked well for me is to latch onto a fellow runner or group of runners at the start and shadow them through the first mile or so until the crowd and also the rest of the field start to spread out. If I'm in the correct starting corral, I reason that the folks I'm tailing will be reasonably close to the pace I wanted to set anyway so I won't be losing any time by hanging with them for a while.





I also never race without my watch .... I try to check my splits at every mile for a couple reasons. First, and most obvious, it lets me know if I'm holding the right pace. Second, I'm a numbers geek, and it gives me something to think about on the way to the next mile marker besides the crowd.





Those two tricks generally get me through the start in good shape. After the first mile or so, I'm usually in the groove and can start running a little more aggressively. The next biggest pain for crowds is the finish line. Here again, I tend to get over excited and start accelerating for the finish too soon. The only thing that's worked for me here is to pull together whatever mental strength I have left and focus on keeping good form and a steady pace until I actually have the finish line in sight. I'm ashamed to admit that on more than one occasion, I've misjudged the distance to the finish by the reaction of the crowd and run out of steam on my final sprint.





Good luck in '08!