The Countdown Has Officially Begun!

I cannot believe 2 weeks from now I will be in Germany.  It was well over a year ago I first learned about this trip so it's been a long time coming!

One great thing about this trip that is better than the last is I know 8 other people I will be traveling with and I consider them friends.  So this time I have people I can get excited with and countdown the days with!

I haven't even started thinking about packing yet... well I've thought about it but haven't started.  This is very unlike me.  Usually I'll start making piles of stuff in my room... cosmetics... electronics... things like that.  I think that's what I will do on Monday when we have no school.

What I am not so excited about is the weather.  I checked the forecast for Germany today and there is still SNOW in the forecast!!  WHAT!?  Ugh.  It better not snow when we are there!  If it's going to snow packing will not be easy!!!

Next Saturday we have a morning meeting with everyone going on the trip to get all the last minute travel details.  After that those of us that are going on this trip for college credit will have to stay for the last class.  I, along with my friend Jenn, will be leading a discussion about a book we had to read.  It was an interesting book called The Last Survivor of Dachau. 

And now... to enjoy Easter with my family!

Becoming a Disney Princess

Some of you may or may not know, but last October I decided to challenge myself and I registered for my first half marathon.  My friend Michelle has been participating in Run Disney races for years and has been telling me I should give it a shot for a long time. 

In October I took the plunge and signed up.  I followed the Jeff Galloway training plan... 2 maintenance runs during the week and a long run on the weekend, gradually adding mileage.  I lucked out and was able to do most of the long Saturday runs with my neighbor outside, snow and all!!

 

My training went really well until January 26th when I did something to my knee during the last mile on a 12 mile run.  The last 3 weeks leading up to the half marathon were very difficult- I couldn't run!  Talk about stressful!  Here it was, just weeks before I would be running from Epcot to Magic Kingdom and back again and I couldn't even do a mile on the treadmill!

I rested up and headed down to Florida on a Tuesday.  We had 3 fun filled days in Disney leading up to the Disney Princess Half Marathon weekend.  There were lots of firsts this trip... like my first time on Expedition Everest and Rockin' Roller Coaster!  It was an exciting vacation leading up to the race.

 

Saturday morning we were up early to run the Mickey and Minnie Mouse Royal Family 5k.  This started in the parking lots of Epcot, went about a mile behind the scenes, then the last 2 miles inside Epcot through the World Showcase.  It was a lot of fun stopping in each countries to take pictures with the different characters.  Here we are with the man himself... Mickey!

 

 

 

Sunday morning started even earlier.  The alarm went off at 4:00am!  We were up and dressed and ready to run well before the sun came up.  Some how I was able to run all 13.1 miles pain free!!  The route started on a highway just outside Epcot, we followed the main highway to Disney, with the monorail to the right.  We entered Magic Kingdom, ran down Main Street, through Tomorrowland, and back through the castle.  We left Magic Kingdom through Adventureland before going "behind the scenes at Magic Kingdom.  We ran back to Epcot and towards the finish line!  Here we are all dressed up before the run began... can you guess who we are?!

 

My time was a lot longer than I had been running at home... but running in 100% humidity is very different from running around piles of snow!  The whole process of traning taught me a lot about myself.  In high school I couldn't even run the mile and now I just ran 13.1... 16.3 for the whole weekend!  It really prooves that if yo put your mind to it you can really do anything!

 

Now that the Princess is done it's time to get ready for the trip to Germany.  My April school vacation trip will certainly be a completely different trip from this one.