Successfully slow

Not sure how it happened so quickly, but all of a sudden it's Thursday again which means... long run (accompanied by mental gymnastics, of course) day. The good news is that today is the first day of summer--the BEST season of the year, of course--and, despite the forecast for rain and clouds, the yellow orb I worship actually has made a decent appearance today.

After reading more on the subject of long runs, polling some other wacko triathlete friends of mine, and discussing it a bit with the coach, I decided that today's long run would be no longer than 16 miles with a 2-mile walk to get my 18. My desire to recover and keep the injuries down to a dull roar has superseded my quest to get as close to marathon distance and make myself believe I can survive the Ironman. I'm going to have to decide to survive it with a little less proof.

The plan worked and I was slightly slower and definitely less miserable than last week. I started/ended at Seward Park again, stashed a bottle of Hammer stuff at J&J's house for the turnaround, and also stashed an additional bottle of Nuun along the route near Leschi to improve hydration. The "H Triplets," my heel, hip, and hamstring competed for attention and my heel has won this week's award for "Body part I'd most like to trade in for a new one" by a wide margin as it has decided to hurt most of the time, not just when I'm running. The PT showed me how to stretch the plantar fascia the other day and I will do so religiously...and I will start rotating the ice between the triplets shortly. I'm glad the mileage will back down again a bit the next 2 weeks before the Half Iron on July 8.

Not sure I should get full credit for my 2-mile walk at the end because it wasn't very fast and I stopped at the mile mark for a bathroom and stretching break. But I WAS still moving and the stretching helped quite a bit for the last mile. Did the regular stand-in-the-lake for my legs at the end and called it good...and successfully located the bottles on my route on the way home :)

Summary:
16 miles (run 9 min/walk 1 min):
2:53:26
Avg. HR = 135 bpm
1 mile walk:
15:36 (111 Avg HR)
1.1 mile walk (+stretch, bathroom):
20:25 (99 avg HR)

18.11 miles total
3:29:34