OK, it wasn’t quite a blizzard out this morning, but there were a couple inches of snow on the roads. There were still some snow flakes drifting down and portions of the run had some sort of sleeting/frozen pellet precipitation falling out of the sky. The conditions were far from the worst I’ve ever run in, but weren’t quite as good as I had hoped.
I had been looking forward to this run all week and was hoping for lots of snow gently falling around me as I cruised around the neighborhood. I’ve done several runs with the snow floating down and it’s always one of my favorite runs of the year. The world gets so quiet out that it’s a little magical. I didn’t quite get that this morning so I was a little disappointed, however managed a couple firsts for the run.
When I ran Oil Creek last fall, I got a pair of Nanospikes as a door prize. I hadn’t had a chance to wear them yet, so this was my first chance to try them out. I’ve never worn any traction devises while running so was curious to see how effective they could be. They slipped over my normal running shoes with no trouble and I was out the door. I was amazed at the improved traction I got. It wasn’t until I got into 2 plus inches of snow that my feet started sliding around. Anything less than an inch and it was like there was no snow on the roads. The traction comes from metal spikes so I’ll be interested to see how long they’re effective before they’re worn down to nothing. We don’t get awful road conditions too much so I’ll probably only wear them a couple times per year. And I really hope I didn’t just jinx myself with 10 more days of treacherous road surfaces.
The other first with my run was that I took a new route. I typically don’t run the road I live on because there is a decent amount of traffic and there are no shoulders to get off the road. I knew there wasn’t going to be any traffic at 8am in the middle of a snow storm so took advantage. Turns out I saw one snow plow and 2 pick-ups on my 5 mile run as all sane people were still snuggled in there beds.
Maybe I’ll get another chance to run while it’s snowing later this year. Course I’d be equally happy if this was all the snow we get for the year. If you’re on the east coast, stay safe this weekend!
Do you enjoy snow runs or would you rather hit the treadmill?