Snow Shoes

Today I decided it was time to get off the treadmill and get myself outside to gain some experience running with the Snow Shoes. I got in the truck and drove just down the street to meet up with some snowmobile trails. The Atlas Race snow shoes are made primarly for running on packed snow, even though you can run in some deeper snow.

The day was perfect with highs in the high 30's -- of course the snow was beginning the melt just a bit. I started out running down the trail with some cross country ski poles, but I quickly found out that I didn't need the poles. Running in the snow shoes was actually quite fun. For the most part it feels like your doing the run shuffle (brings back memories of the IronMan run). Once I got the feel, then I was able to just settle into a grove at about a 10 minute mile pace. I'm not sure if I could have gone faster or not, but that pace seemed doable for the 5k race at the Badger State Games Quadrathon.

I tried running off the trail on a smaller trail that had just a small path -- this was much much harder. Once you get to the point that you need to do high knee "pickups", then it gets tiring pretty fast.

I completed 2.5 miles without any problems. Very enjoyable...