Long time, no blog.

Hello all you wonderful, beautiful readers!  Long time, no blog!

The last you heard from me (in this fashion, anyway) I just finished my very first marathon and was looking forward to my Disney Cruise vacation.

Well, the cruise has come and gone, life has begun again, and wedding planning is in full swing!

Firstly, let me just say that I felt every bit a princess on our cruise and I would highly recommend sailing with Disney!  We had never been on a cruise before and although we did a short trip it was 1000% magical.  Before you ask, yes we went alone, with no kids, and yes there were other couples doing the same!  Disney is the top honeymoon destination in the WORLD and at our dining table alone there was another couple 6 months married (Hi Rachel and Resha!) and a newlywed couple who had done a few days at the park followed by the cruise.  There is SO MUCH to do, definitely adult only things as well.  We enjoyed a little bit of everything, a lot bit of the food, and of course came back with sunburns and happy.  When we docked beside two Carnival ships in Nassau our boat was towering the other two and there just really was no comparison.  Everything was spotless, the crew was fabulous, and our stateroom was spacious and the veranda view waking up in the morning was the best.

The morning we were leaving we officially booked our wedding ceremony and reception site!  We will be married at the Columbus Athenaeum on 12/13/14 with our reception in the ballroom - every one of my fairytale dreams come true!  We also booked our photographer - Erica Coffman of Erica Kay Photography.  You can check out her work at http://www.ericakayphotography.com and I've been obsessed with her (in a non-weird way) since I saw her work on Instagram.  The power of social media!  We met the night before our cruise and I felt like we were old friends.  I can't wait for our engagement shoot!

So I left off after the last marathon post about how I wasn't sure if I'd ever do it again - well... I am.  9 days after Columbus I registered for the Cincinnati Flying Pig marathon on May 4th, 2014.  Yes, I'm a psycho.  I couldn't bring myself to ONLY do the half now that I've done a full.  I'm a glutton for punishment.  It's a hilly course and will be much more challenging than Columbus because it was so flat.  I'm utilizing a shorter training cycle this time and incorporating speed/tempo runs with hill drills.  We have a great Metro Park close by that has a giant hill that will be perfect for the torture I'm about to inflict on myself.  I also signed up for the Heart Mini half marathon in March as part of training.

After the Pig I'll immediately begin training for the Mason Sprint Triathlon that's June 29th and will be doing that with one of the sweetest people I've ever met - my girlfriend Laura that I met via Instagram.  She's going to travel down and we'll be first time triathletes together! She's got one of the biggest hearts of anyone I've ever met and we've been communicating for several months now.  I'm so excited to have a Tri buddy!  I found an 8 week training plan for that which will fit perfectly just after the marathon.  I'll be intermittently biking and swimming as cross training during this marathon training cycle so I won't be completely lost in those areas (hopefully!).  I'm so glad to have plans in place through the first 6 months of 2014.  I've been attempting Insanity since we got back from the cruise and I'm just not loving it.  I'll do it some days, others I won't.  It's not like I can't complete the workouts, I'm just not interested in them.  I did my first post-marathon run the other night where I just turned on my music with no set distance to go and just let my legs carry me.  My average pace was in the 10:40's and on the same route from back in April my average pace was 13:20's.  The improvement was mind blowing to me and I was so happy with it.  It was nice to just run and to genuinely WANT to be out there, not because a training plan told me that's what I needed to do that day.  It's crazy how much endurance I've lost but it will come back.  That and the colder weather on my lungs will take some getting used to but I'm excited to train in colder temperatures.  I probably won't say that in a few months :)

I also started the Advocare 24 day challenge the Monday after the cruise.  I've been on it for the last 16 days now and have lost over 6 of the 8 pounds I gained the week of vacation.  I've been about 80-90% on plan and have done well following the program and meal guide.  I haven't exercised as much as I had been but I worked or was on call for 10 days in a row so that put a damper on things because I was exhausted.  I did it to myself, but I also have a wedding dress to buy!  I'm excited to see my final results and my goal was to drop into the 180's by the end of the challenge and if all goes as it has been I should  hit that goal!  I remember being 175 pounds my sophomore year of high school then 220 the next thing I knew so it's exciting to hit the next mile stone.

Speaking of mile stones... my tattoo.  So I didn't expect that we were actually going to *finally* get engaged and start planning and paying for wedding things but that's obviously taking precedent right now. I'm still planning on getting it in the future but it's on hold at the moment.  Tattoos are expensive and I know you get what you pay for so I don't want to walk in the cheapest place just to get it done.

I think that's about all I've got for now without blabbing on too much.  I've got 8 days left of my 24 day challenge and I'll do a full recap and my results at the end of it.

Have a splendid week!