Marathon and beyond!

I'm still not sure about signing up for the Ultra. I ran 30 miles monday(last monday, 8 days ago) and it was hard, very hard. One, I did it on my own, two I had to refill the bottle at the 25 mile point and head out again into the dark for the last 5 miles, and three it's just a long friggen way and the longest I've ever run. For that it was a neat feeling to look at the Garmin and see the 26.2 mile point come and go. I ran the whole way, no walking only two brief stops. I actually rushed through the stops to refill my infinit and gobble up some gel blocks. 30 miles in 4:16, I ran pretty well 8:30s the whole way right where I wanted to be. I ran as much as I could on dirt, grass, and gravel. Some of my 12.5 mile loop is a red gravel trail, maybe 1/3 of it??

Anyways since then my achilles has been bugging me here an there, just a tad though. Sooooooo it was gone sunday, showed up a bit after sunday's run, gone today, so I'll run today and see. My plan is to run long tomorrow, or friday, cross my fingers hopefully do 35 miles or more. That'd be my last chance to run long since this weekend I'm busy and that is 3 weeks till the race so I don't want to push the recovery period. But!!! If I feel anything in the long run or even before then I'll pull the plug, I'm not risking an injury, the last half of this year is really all about experimenting with some longer runs which I have done. I don't Neeeeeeeeeeeeeed to do that ultra. I'd rather not and run comfortably all winter. I'll let you know how it goes, I should know for sure by monday if I plan to run the race.