3 hour bike and Goin' to Spain!!!

Rode three hours of all base today. I was freakin' pooped after not doing any real riding for about 2 weeks. The good news is I didn't feel anything in my foot. The bad news is, I've lost a bit of fitness from not doing anything longer than 2 hours in the past couple weeks. I was able to finish the ride strong, but I just didn't feel quite like myself today. This weekend is going to be BIG in terms of volume, so hopefully I'll get through it feeling O.K.

In other news...I'm going to Spain at the end of February!!! My coach runs a training camp there in the month of what he calls "Crapruary", and through some very fortunate circumstances, I'm going to be able to go. Originally I couldn't swing this trip, but I'm very excited to be going now. If nothing else, it'll give me a little time away-something I haven't had in years.

Otherwise things are going well with the foot. This has been the longest I've gone without any real running since I began a couple years ago. Come to think of it, I don't think I took more than two or three days off without a run. I guess I'm due after all that time. The biggest things that have been helping, while they aren't cures, are self massage and wearing minimalistic shoes and/or no shoes when possible. I'm convinced that shoes have been my greatest downfall in all this. Having a rotation of shoes is a good thing, but exclusively running in something like the Newtons, drastically different from anything else, at least for me, has proven to be a huge mistep-literally. I'm very dissapointed that I allowed myself to take it as far as I did, but it's been a good learning experience. With any luck, I'll be able to kick this injury and get in a little bit of base running before the Spain trip. Without any luck, I'll have to wait until Spain to do my first serious run training of the year.