LAKE BUENA VISTA, FLA (1/12/03) - I finished first at the Disney World Marathon, thank you, thank you.

You would think an old guy like me, whose once-rubber legs have been ground to gristle, would not be caught up in the pre-dawn klieg lights, tribal tunes blasting through stacked speakers, and electricity from 22,000 runners - a mobile city - unleashed by fireworks and Mickey's countdown to romp and roll through the Magic Kingdom.

You'd imagine the miles run in Michigan - crunching ice underfoot, leaning headlong into hail - would gird or numb me enough on a 45- degree morning to go out cautiously, not think, "Ha, you're on my tundra, Dixie boys! You're toast!"

I lined up with 6,000 half-marathoners (16,000 marathon entrants beside us), then followed maroon-and-gold singlets of Team Hansons - our state's finest - through cheering corridors and the bum-ba-ba-DUM of drums into silent night.

I flowed through dark, quiet corners of Epcot's backstage area, near The Living Seas, merging/emerging into Epcot's German village, behind the leaders but lieder playing, into TWANG ...

OK, even Beethoven had his discords, I thought ... into POP!

Screaming pain, not heard.

I was the first runner done at Disney. bum-ba-ba-DUM went the drums as the races combined for another pass through the start line. bum-ba- ba-DUM! Flew a thousand miles to run less than three.

"New to running?" asked a bored EMT in an otherwise-empty med tent.

"Thirty years," I said.

"Oh."

Another guy iced my a**, er, left hamstring/buttock, and wrapped me in Mylar like a sandwich. I laid on a cot while more EMTs hovered, and, above them, the canvas ceiling seemed blank as paper I'd hoped to write on about my fantasy race through Disney World.

Instead, shame turned my thoughts toward "Dizzy Whirled" - home - where my daughter was turning three. She likes aping daddy: I tap a keyboard, she taps my leg and says, "Daddy, round and round," meaning it's time to get off my butt, lay her on my office chair and spin her. "Stop" means remove her from the chair, lay her on the floor face-up and loom over her, making faces. She gets full benefit of her dizziness while the only person I fear will soon fall is me.

Disney's built on children. If you've survived almost half a century, like me, you'll recall a wand-waving fairy who transformed your black-and- white TV into "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color." Fly to Disney World, all these years later, on a red-eye, collapse in the Animal Kingdom Lodge and awake at dawn with a giraffe looking through your window. All these billions of dollars later, the wonder lives.

Say what you will about Disney morphing into a empire. Rue how running has changed from a few young bucks chasing records to a mass sport crammed with charity runners and non-runners out transforming themselves miles and hours behind the leaders. There's still something about first principles - recreation to re-create ourselves - that lasts.

Ours is the kingdom, I thought from my vantage swaddled in cooking sheets, and the magic is where we're at.

I left the med tent with a garbage bag draped over me, legs turning gooseflesh as a northwester swept the empty receiving area, bending palms and causing volunteers to huddle near flapping tarps, the first runner there.

Just beyond Cinderella's Castle, where the half-marathon was ending, Kevin Hanson (third overall in 1:15:36), Brett Sanborn (fourth in 1:17:30), Keith Hanson (seventh in 1:20:22) and Tracey Rizer (seventh woman in 1:30:43) were upholding our state's honor.

Elsewhere, "Perfect 10" Michiganders Deborah Lazaroff, 47, of Jackson; Robert Dorr, 50, of Tipton; and David Agnew, 52, of Clarkston, were maintaining their record of finishing all 10 Disney Marathons.

World-class athlete Saul Mendoza wheeled through the finish line of the marathon in a course-record 1:36:39, ebullient. The first real runner - Brazilian Adriano Bastos, bounding and buoyant, with his hair tied in rainbow ringlets - crossed in 2:18:33.

Gaps between first finishers made them seem like spray, then a river, a mirrored pool.

Then the living sea ...

I felt good rejoining, like not being dizzy any longer. Runners streamed like glowing points in a Seurat painting that can't be framed, letters off the page of a human-race story that has turned into something else. For an eight-minute internet TV show about the 2003 Disney World Marathon, visit http://michiganrunner.net. For complete race results, visit http://runningnetwork.com/results/eventresults.com. MR