Need some time for my heel to heal

Today's run (street): 5.52 miles at 9:38

Long weekends are always welcome, especially when the weather is as nice as it's been over the last three days. Today is Labor Day and, among other things, it signifies the spiritual end of summer and the emergence of fall. My kids return to school on Tuesday and they're ready for anything. I'm back to work tomorrow and looking forward to taking a rest day from running. Between Saturday morning and this morning I've covered over 19 miles and I fear I may have pushed a little too hard.

The running plan for the weekend was distance and I think I succeeded with that goal.  However, I may have injured the heel of my left foot this morning and I'm hoping that a day's rest (or even two if necessary) will be enough time to restore things to normal. My morning run started well with an easy loop along the service road that borders my neighborhood to the east before heading west and then south until I re-entered along the eastbound service road. I had no particular distance in mind but two miles went by very quickly so I thought I'd keep going for a while. I reached four miles still feeling fresh despite the 13+ miles I'd put in the previous day. Almost as soon as I checked my distance I felt a pain in the heel of my left foot that I hoped would pass quickly. I knew right away that this was more than a temporary jolt due to a misaligned landing and I thought about walking the rest of the way home, a distance of about 1.5 miles.

The pain remained but it got no worse so I maintained my route feeling surprisingly strong. With about half a mile left to go I experienced an interesting dichotomy -- my legs felt tied down with sandbags but my overall energy level was still very high. I forced my speed and picked up my cadence enough to attain my first negative split since mile 1. At the end I still felt fine and if not for concern for my heel I knew I could have gone on for a while. I iced my foot when I got in the house and wore my Brooks with a pair of Smartwool socks for the rest of the day's activities (today's run was in the Kinvaras).  My heel is feeling much better as a result but I'm going to watch it carefully and continue with ice and rest for the next day, at least. Overall I'm very pleased with my Labor Day weekend running and I think I've turned a corner on my stamina issue. This bodes well for the Great Cow Harbor 10K but I still need to do some speed work if I hope to reach my timing goal.