7.5 miles in perspective

I did my longest continuous run since mid-June today. I ran 7.5 miles this afternoon.
Ok, my workouts are longer than that but workouts are not continuous.

7.5 miles. That's like nothing. I know. I used to run more than that every single day and now it is my long run. Pathetic? NOOOO.
I do not want to run more for now. My mileage this week was around 35-37 miles (somewhere there, I do not know precisely since I run by minutes except workouts of course). Which I feel is enough for me know. The ITB problem comes and goes in 3-month intervals and October is the third month. So I am keeping all my fingers crossed.
I am doing a lot of things differently now:
-have lower mileage,
-do not run on roads (I WALK over one mile to trail, do my run and walk back. I need to find a place where I can leave the bike so I can ride bike there instead of walking),
-do a lot of cross training (bike, swim),
-use foam roller (almost) every day and
-try icing after every easy run (I wish I could ice after workout but I am at school then so cannot do that),
-plus I wear ITB bandage during every run.
With all these small things I hope I can get over that stupid ITB problem.

I went to watch LA triathlon this morning. It was interesting. I have never seen a triathlon race.
But I only watched swim and bike, not run. I saw people running before.
Water swim was crazy. Waves were so huge, people were like in a whirlpool. Scary.
It was pretty amazing how all kind of people did it. Chubby, fit, old, young and although almost all of them had road bikes I saw couple tri bikes and couple mountain bikes and cruisers. Everybody can do it! :)
I watched them getting out of swim/bike transition and almost none of them put bike into right gear before leaving a bike in T1 and it was a slight uphill out of T1 and all of them were struggling so much first couple meters. I guess you learn from your experience (or preferably from other people's bad experience).
I actually rode over 20miles watching the race (ouch, my butt. I was not ready for it and I did not wear very comfortable shorts). People on bikes were so fast. It is either that I am a really slow biker or that 79 hilly miles day before took their toll or that my bike is a piece of crap.
I think it is a combination. I have still a long way to go since I am totally an endurance biker but can not get the pedals to move fast. My roommate asked me today why I do not get a real bike since I am going such long rides. Well, I would love to but I am not buying a real bike unless I know I am going to stay in one country (or at least in one state) for longer than 6 months. And she offered to lend me one of her clip pedals, but I would have to buy shoes. And that would be only a waste of money right now with that torture machine.

I did not watch PROs and elites because they started too early and come on, it is Sunday and I am not getting up at 6:30 to see some random dudes running into water.

Bike ride was from the ocean all the way to downtown LA and the whole boulevard was closed and cars could not cross the street. So if they wanted to get from one side of LA to another they had to go all the way around. And there were policemen at all intersections and drivers were so pissed and were quarreling with policemen. Funny.