Tuesday, March 23, 2010

December 12, 2009

As you can see I'm not really posting these things real time... by the time December rolled around I was running exclusively in the Vibrams. I knew the snow was coming but I didn't pay close enough attention to understand how much was coming. A friend of mine was supposed to meet me at my house to go for a six mile run but due to the snow he cancelled. My wife thought I was crazy but I felt that it was an excellent opportunity to see whether the Vibrams were viable cold weather shoes as well.

All I wore on this run were the Vibrams, warm up pants, two cotton t-shirts, a cotton sweathshirt, scarf, ear warmers and hydration pack (more on why this is relevant later). I wasn't sure how things would go so I started with a mile loop that brought me back to my house. After about an eighth of a mile my feet warmed right up and I didn't have any issues. Once I finished the mile I was feeling great and decided to do six more. The first two miles were great then I hit some knee deep snow. It didn't make it any colder but it made it much more difficult to run. Still no issues with my feet. The last two miles were the worst. As it turns out I was running into a very stiff cold wind in driving snow. It was snowing so hard that I couldn't even look up... I pulled my scarf up as far as I could and simply kept running.

It was at this point that I started to realize that I didn't wear the correct cold weather gear. The wind was blowing right through my shirt. It didn't help that my undershirts were pretty much soaked with sweat by this point. The second issue was the space between the Vibrams and the top of my athletic pants. Since there was nothing covering that part of my foot it got really cold. In fact, if you look at the pictures you can see that the snow actually gathered and froze to the bottom of my pants.

My wife thought it was really funny that I had ice frozen to my eye lashes when I got home....

My verdict is that the Vibram, when being actively used (i.e. running), is a viable cold weather and snow running shoe. I don't recommend it for walking as that doesn't seem to be enough of a work out to keep the foot warm. I solved the cold upper foot problem on later runs by cutting the bottom of some socks off and strapping one end under the Vibram strap to hold it in place. Voila, no more cold ankles.

Since that day I have run in the snow at least ten other times. Running on fresh snow is great... running on old hard frozen snow is not much fun. The problem is that as the snow freezes and re-freezes and makes for a lot of jagged sharp points... kind of like running on big gravel. Not very fun.
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