With all the snow we currently have here in Northern Germany, I was getting quite frustrated with running on ice or in deep snow. After asking a bit around, I got a lot of suggestions for snowshoeing. If you google for ‘training snowshoe’ you’ll find a couple of good articles (such as this Owner’s Manual from Running Times).
So I went onto Amazon and ordered a relatively cheap pair of snowshoes:
After I paid for the overnight service, I could try them the next day.
At first they felt really strange, but that went away really quick and walking came quite naturally. It maybe took me 10 minutes after which running felt quite normal.
Here are my main takeaways from my sessions:
- Apart from having to lift your feet a bit higher, you don’t have to alter your regular stride. (And the extra lift may be a good drill for combating the “Ironman shuffle”.) The pace is maybe 1 min/k (about 90 seconds per mile) slower compared to “regular” running.
- Running on “paved” trails (i.e. where a few people have already walked or skied) feels really good. You have excellent traction even on packed snow or ice.
- Running in deep snow is really hard and only possible for short distances. You still sink in a bit (maybe that’s different for ’larger’ sizes), and walking was sufficient for me to lift my HR.
- It’s a great chance to try some new paths and just go “cross country”.
- It’s tricky to go by distance, it’s better to go by time. I’ve done a few sessions of about 1 hour, and they felt pretty similar to regular running.
- You have to keep attention to the ground, so running in the dark is not really an option.
All in all, it was a nice change from regular running and I really enjoyed snowshoeing.
Of course, now that I have an alternative, it has started to get a bit warmer and some of the snow is melting away. I just hope I can do some decent faster sessions soon …
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