Friday, December 19, 2008

Snow running at night

Yesterday, after work, I headed to the bike path in Burlington, a beautiful path along the shore of Lake Champlain. I had snowshoes and YakTrax with me, and decided to run with the latter. I took two lights with me, because you never know when the batteries will go in a light (and the batteries did die in my handheld light by the end of the run). It was in the high 20s, fairly calm, and beautiful.

The first mile was mostly clear of snow, so I had to run on the side of the path to avoid trashing the YakTrax on pavement. After that, I did the next four miles in about 4" of nice fluffy snow. My time was slow but it was a fun run.

With a storm due later today, a bigger storm due on Sunday, and then another storm on Christmas Eve, it looks like snowshoeing season is definitely upon us. This winter, one of my primary training focuses will be to avoid mileage obsession and simply train. What I really mean by that is that I want to snowshoe run a lot and spend less time on the treadmill. When I let my training log dictate my training, I'll hop on the treadmill for an hour vs. snowshoe run for an hour. I can cover 6+ miles easily in an hour on the treadmill, but I might only do 4 miles of snowshoe running in the same amount of time. But, it's way more fun to be outside, I get to do hills and varying terrain, and I am willing to bet the training effect for ultras is better when I'm on my snowshoes. So, I have to not obsess about miles, and instead focus on fun and quality training.

After today, I'll be teaching skiing 9 of the next 16 days. The gym is closed for a few days each of the next two weeks, so my lifting will be curtailed. So, I should have time for some nice snowshoe runs on my non-skiing days. On Christmas day, after the morning present opening, I think I'll try to do a nice two hours of snowshoeing.

Tonight is a lifting night, focusing on deadlifts. My primary goal will be to lift 325 pounds in my single rep 4th set.

No comments: