First off, I want to thank everyone for the comments, emails and tweets about my most recent post where I was debating running a half marathon in a few weeks despite not much training because of my plantar fasciitis.

I got some great encouragement and some really solid tough love. I'm still deciding, but I'm leaning toward making the trip and seeing what happens. I can always drop out of the race if need be.

Anyway, this weekend, I met up with my Ironman friends again for another weekend of awesome long workouts.


Swim, bike, run!

Saturday I met Aziz and Jim for some back-to-back spin class action. Unfortunately my favorite instructor wasn't there this week, so we had two hours with one of my least favorite instructors.

Luckily Aziz had a solid plan of attack, and the three of us spent the two hours doing a variety of drills -- sprints, climbs, combos of both. At one point during the second class, the instructor saw the three of us doing our own thing in the back, and started having the rest of the class do the same thing we were doing.

She would yell, "Keep up with those bikers in the back. OK they're sprinting now, we're sprinting too."

It's a good thing I was working so hard that I couldn't laugh because I just couldn't help wanting to crack up.

After the two hours of spin, I left the guys to finish their long ride, and I hit the road for a 30-minute run off.


If you look really closely, you'll see my average pace was 9:25

Holy brick legs batman.

After finishing, I ran to the Jimmy Johns a block from the gym and annihilated a turkey sandwich. It's embarrassing how fast I put away that food. I was so, so hungry.

Sunday morning I was back at it again. I met Aziz at the gym for my first swim workout in ages.

He had some sort of crazy long swim on his schedule, but I opted to do some drills. In total I did 1900 yards, which was a pretty decent workout after not having been in the pool for a long time.



I did the workout above, I just changed some of the time intervals because some of them were just a smidge too fast for me. Also, I don't do kick drills. I hate them with a fiery passion, so I just swam that 200.

We wrapped up our swims around the same time, did a quick change and set out for our run. He had 2 hours and 30 minutes of running scheduled, and I was hoping to do about six miles to see how I felt for Shamrock in a few weeks.

We did a nice out and back on a new-to-me trail, but I broke off after three miles and let him go on his way.



I finished up my last three miles, and I have to say I felt pretty good. Sure my legs were a little tired, but nothing really hurt.

Yes, I was a little sore yesterday, and spent a large part of the day chilling in my compression socks because my calves were really tight, but my plantar fasciitis didn't bother me at all, which I think is a huge win, especially after the high volume of training I did over the weekend.

I'm actually really enjoying these long workouts, and training with my Ironman friends is kind of fun. It makes me excited to think that I might be able to start racing again soon!