The sun is up, the air is fresh, the stone is old

Through this last week my heel has been hurting pretty good.  I was hoping it would fade away with some easy short runs through the week but by Friday it was worse.  Not really sure what it is but hoping not some small type of bone fracture.  Last night I decided to bag doing the race today, just didn't make sense, and just run it at a slow marathon pace for fun.  I didn't feel like not starting another race.  But even then it was hard.  This foot thing is going to change my fall running.  This will be a week of cross training.  1:20 time 

Off day with some hiking in So Cal.

1200 meter swim.  First of the swim workouts that I will be doing this week.

1600 meter swim.

1600 meter swim.  Felt really strong on the swim today, dropped into the 35 minute rythm.

1600 meter swim.  I am really getting attached to these swims this week.  This morning I dropped down to 32 minutes which is good training time for me!  I am so tempted to get more into this again and take some time away from the running thing!

This is just such a great race.  I waffled back and forth on it this year with this heel injury but just didn't want to miss it so I decided to fit it in between swimming and at least have a good time.  I took a max dose of IB an hour before start and did a one mile warm up just before the race.  My foot hurt the whole race.  Every mile.  But nothing like last weekend so I'll be hitting the pool again this week and feel comfortable I'll pull through this.

Started off with the second group of guys today, familiar faces and a few new guys.  After the first mile I knew that I'd be able to run the distance with the heel and decided on an a 5:40 pace.  Albert and I ran together all the way down until the turn at mile 7 and then he gapped me.  I was beyond happy to be running the pace I was at so I let him go.   I haven't felt legs this fresh in a long time which was due to a week off just swimming, but I was so worried about tweaking that foot!  As I turned the course up the hill I looked back since I knew that group of great runners with Walter and Clyde were going to be reeling me in any minute, but I couldn't see them anywhere so I dropped back to a 6:20 pace for the hills and only picked it up again when I turned down Millville for the last 2 miles. 

I was not expecting to be able to put this one in, so the whole run was great.  So many from the blog and Circuit to talk to today!  Most impressed with Walter for gutting out 13 miles with cracked ribs and Janea Richardson running a 1:19.  Awesome!