It was too damn nice to run on the treadmill this morning! The temps were in the high 20’s *F, the sun was trying to come out and to be quite honest I didn’t feel like running inside.

Let’s back up a little. The photo above was from first thing this morning on Bennie’s first walk. The roads were slush/icy then. So I wasn’t too overly thrilled about running a lot on them at that time.

When we walked the dogs later this morning down-back, the dirt road was in great shape, although the tar roads were a lot slushy, wet, gritty, with patches of ice. So if I wanted to get a decent run in I was heading down-back for most of it.

Planned Workout Description vs Actual: Easy 5 or so. Although the pace was easy running on the snow was not all that easy

Variables that impacted the run: Road conditions, snow, bright sunshine

Weather: Clear, 29°F, Feels like 29°F, Humidity 74%, Wind 2mph from SSW

• Day: Wednesday – I kind of lost track of what day it was – it felt more like a Monday after the storm yesterday.

• Course: Town Office 5.0 Miler

• Distance: 5.01

• Duration: 49:26

• Pace: 9:52

• Running Streak Day #: 2

• Comments: Today was not a day I was focused on going fast. Running on the snow down-back was like running on beach sand by the water line. All I know is that I activated stabilizer muscles that haven’t been used since last Winter.

While the snow was plowed down to the lower gate and then packed down by vehicles going through, it still gave a bit when you took a stride, so I had to do more a land, lever, lift, without attempting to toe-off, which is not my normal stride.

The other part is that while the road was still snow covered, I was not going to run very fast and didn’t. I plodded along and enjoyed the views and even stopped to take more photos than usual.

When I got back on the tar, it had warmed up enough to really make the roads wet, sandy and slushy, but the ice was gone.

It was a good run and one that made me decide to get my Nike Wildhorse 5 out the back of Clifford, to see if on the next run they are worth keeping or not.

Shoes: Mileage (94.9) New Balance Propel – I purposely chose to run in road shoes down-back to see how they performed on the snow-covered road and nasty stuff on the tar roads.

While they did good enough, I tend to think that either my Wildhorse 5’s or Sense Ride v1s would be better choices. The grip was decent and I was able to get through the workout without any issues, but I could tell that I needed a little more grip.