Labor Day Long Run

1. Distance assigned: 22 Distance ran: 24.1k

today was my first "run away from home" - After dropping my son off at sailing lessons, I ran in the "green heart" of Holland - on a bike path starting from Braassemermeer (the lake) along a canal leading up to Amsterdam. I ran with shoes & socks. No knee or foot pain. It was easier to run on the pavement than on the beach. Even so, this week's pace was a minute per mile slower on average than the last long run I did on the beach. I truly hated my socks during the last four kilometres (my toes were deep in conversation with the seams on the socks). And I forgot my running shorts at home. So I ran in my warm up pants. Not bad, considering it was windy and overcast. But these pants are certainly not my favourite. Summer has packed up and left with all the tourists.

I went over the assigned distance. I lacked an easy turn-around landmark, so I planned as best I could and then plotted the actual distance after I got home. Here's the route - http://www.mapmyrun.com/run/netherlands/kaag-en-braassem/444125225434159582

It was quite pretty to be in the countryside. I will have a new Garmin GPS in a couple weeks, so the days of a "wild guess" hopefully will be over. I really like long distance running (although this should really be called wogging).
2. Pace assigned: "slow" Pace actually run: 16min/mile - 4:00 hrs total
3. Walk break ratio assigned: 1:1 Walk break ratio used: as assigned -
4. Speed-work done: n/a
5. Any aches/pains? nope. Feet and knees were fine during the run.

6. Questions? nope. About shoes - I ran 20 minutes Friday on the treadmill. Not surprisingly the shoes were too big (being a half size bigger than I usually wear - arches were in the wrong place relative to the heels) - I returned them to the shoe store and got my money back instead of store credit, which annoyed the salesman. Enough said. Ran in the Brooks today. They were fine - paid attention to my form and had no pain or fatigue in my right foot. Planned my nutrition in advance (a sports drink with a 3:1 carb to protein ratio) and carried 1.8 L with me - ran out after three hours. I should have planned for a 4-hour run. But I was almost done anyway and the weather was cool.
7. Weekend workout planned for next weekend: 800m*14