MCM - 17.75k golden ticket

About a week ago, I had a nice 40 mile week, it was my 3rd week in a row with my mileage in the high 30's and was feeling good.  Although, my Achilles had been feeling a little "tired".  On Sunday the 17th, I did a 18 mile run at Battlefield and it just didn't feel good at all.  On Monday, things were not feeling that good so I took the day off, Tuesday came and I tried to run.  No go.  Wednesday came and I hit 50 minutes on the bike with 3x5 minute uphill climbs.  Thursday came and I did a 3 mile run and it felt just ok.  No real pain but not 100% enough to run strong.  Friday, I made sure I did my eccentric heel drops (4x25) and iced the foot as I did the whole week. So here comes the point to point  MCM 17.75k (11.01 miles or so) and I am thinking there is no way in hell I am going to be able to run this race.  Additionally, just finishing the race would get me an automatic entry into the Marine Corps Marathon - 2013.  So I figured I would suck it up and just jog it out with Heather who was coming off the B&A marathon last week. We head down to Quantico, VA for the race and there are about 2100 people this year and the course has changed from a 10k to a 17.75k.  Personally, if you are going get a free entry into the MCM, it should be no less than 13.1 and I was thinking 15 would be more of a challenge.  The run was not interesting in that I was just doing a 9:30 pace the whole way and used it more of a training run than anything else.  I ended up coming in somewhere around 900+ out of 2100, not like it mattered...Heather and I got a quick pic right before the race - as zach would say, a selfie:

Today, I am going to work on the Achilles some more and hit the bike for an hour then start running again tomorrow.  Crazy thing was after the race yesterday, the Achilles started feeling better.  The eccentric heel drops really do work - I started to go away from doing them when my mileage started getting higher and higher.  Note to self, stay with the heel drops and avoid injury!!!