After yesterday’s run on the snowmobile trail and then this morning, Bennie making us walk up there again.

The legs were feeling a bit tired. So I had zero illusions about doing anything other than enjoying a good run for a change. I figured that I would do an easy 5.0-miles on my Davis Drive course to work out all the sludge built up in the legs.

Starting was a bit of a chore, the legs didn’t want to cooperate, and there was a pretty good breeze blowing into my face out of the North. However, the temps were pretty good in the 20’s for the first time in a while. Although looking at the Strava weather app results, sometimes I swear they are in a different County than I am.

Stevens Hill wasn’t bad, and I could have gone a lot faster, but today wasn’t about speed, and when I got to the non-winter maintenance area (that yellow sign), I slowed down quite a bit more due to the white ice with just a little snow on top. No sense in being foolhardy and doing the slip, slide, fall, dance routine for the amusement of the crows sitting in the trees.

Once I got over to Tiffany, the roads were clear, and it was more a matter of just doing time and then getting back on the white ice to go up that little hill off Tiffany.

As I said, the legs were a little crispy, and I am working hard to not do too much, too soon on them this year.

Also, I think that I figured out another reason why the 361* Meraki’s were bothering my toes so much. It comes down to the way that I run. Part of my stride has a hard toe-off, which in snow, ice, or other slippery conditions leads to a spin-out of the foot on almost every stride. Which I noticed puts extra pressure on my — you guessed it! My toes.

When I was having issues with my feet, I was also doing a LOT of running down-back or conditions where my feet were in spin-out mode way too often, which I believe caused the callouses to form and eventually lead to my feet swelling up—becoming painful.

Sometimes an injury or discomfort while running can be traced back to relatively simple reasons for it happening, but taking time to think about how these things occur can be frustrating at the time. I needed a little time and space to think about what was going on versus what you believed were the causes. The road conditions, combined with the way I run and the way the toe area is designed all contributed to the problems that I had with my feet/toes.

I will give the Meraki’s a whirl again on the next day that the pavement is clear. So it might be a couple of days with another storm coming in overnight. I even have put in 0.0’s for tomorrow already as my planned run and will take it as a rest day. Although I feel there will be a bit of time behind the snowblower and resting is not likely to be in the cards tomorrow.

Today’s run was an excellent easy run and allowed me to feel how my stride was impacted on the white ice this morning. Add in yesterday’s run on the snowmobile trail left divots each time I toed-off, which gave me a better understanding of why my feet might have gotten so messed up. A bunch of little things added together to make a problem where I loose a week’s worth of runs.

I like problem-solving and attempting to figure out the reasons for my maladies, errr running related problems. 😎