What hurdle is next?

During the course of my 18 week training plan, I've encountered a fair amount of obstacles to deal with.  Some of them are every day things that everyone who is training has to deal with such as time management, not getting enough sleep, etc.  Other things have been problems like getting sick or getting injured.  I had weekly posts here, which include most of the problems that I've come across.  However, the last two weeks, which are supposed to be relatively easy weeks, have had their own set of problems as well and have been pretty annoying.

Last week, I went out for my last 20 mile run and my leg began to hurt.  Two days later, I went out for a set of half-mile sprints and began dry-heaving.  After those two failures, I had two good runs.  Then came Christmas.  Christmas was great, except I was very tired from Christmas eve, and couldn't convince myself to get up and run at 4 a.m.  No big deal, except I couldn't find any other time during the day to get that run in.  And on top of that, the bottom of my left foot was pretty sore.  It seemed I had developed a case of plantar fasciitis.  I taped my foot and babied it all of Christmas day.

Yesterday, I taped my foot again.  It felt much better, but still a little sore.  I still needed to get in this 13 mile run too!  I couldn't find time in the morning, and once church was over, I didn't have enough fuel in me to put together a good run.  So we had lunch, took a nap, and when I woke up, it was go time.  I untaped my foot so I wouldn't develop any blisters, like I did the week before the Prospector's Tri. 

My run couldn't have gone any better.  According to my training plan, I was supposed to run 13 miles at a 7:15/mile pace.  I was able to hold a 7:01/mile pace for the run, which is by far the fastest I've ever run.  Had it been an actual race, it would have been a new half marathon PR!  But, I'll hopefully be setting a new PR in 2 weeks.

So now that I've finished my long run from last week, and have only 2 weeks left before the big race, I'm left wondering what else is going to come up that gets in the way of my training.  Looking back on the last 16 weeks, it sort of seems like I haven't had any weeks that have been picture perfect, but I guess that's part of the excitement of the training, right?  If anything, it'll give me even more to be proud of once I finish the race.  But that's assuming I finish!