Winter Running

Had a great run through snowy trails today …

Photo by David Clow

This year’s winter is pretty full-on here in Germany. Typically, we get a handful of days where it snows, but usually the snow is gone after a few days because it’s too warm. This year, it’s been pretty cold, so the snow has accumulated. Currently, we have about 10cm (4 inches) of snow on the ground, but because there is quite a bit of wind, it gets moved around a bit and accumulates in protected areas. Also means we have to shovel snow three times a day …

Nonetheless, it’s quite nice to go out for a run. Today, I went for a longish run with one of my cousins. We’re going to run a race next week (more on that in my next post), so he wanted to have a nice long run together with me to talk about the race and also try out his new Polar HRM.

We ended up going for almost 1h 15minutes, my longest and most solid run since my injury. The snow was pretty fresh and crunchy, so we had good traction. At times it was pretty windy and cold, but we ran on a nice route where we were mostly covered in the forest. It was really great to talk a bit, even if he was quite pooped when we got towards the end. But I felt relaxed and really good, and it felt good to be able to go for longer runs again.

My leg feels pretty solid again. Even when miss-stepping it is still very solid and shows no “looseness”. The left leg still feels a bit different than the right leg, but mostly because the range of motion between the two legs is still different. I think that the injury is completely healed, and that I have to stretch the newly formed muscle strains to be as flexible as the old ones were. But it feels like I can go back into full training mode again.

I’ll have to think a bit more about next week’s race. It’s pretty hard to figure out a realistic goal for it. I’ll write some more about it in the next days …