training notes, damn cold, damn fast, 18.6km in 1:16h

Tried to see whether you can run fast while it’s winter, quite cold (-17 degrees Celsius) and all white. Yes you can. The difficulty is to stick to a rythm. The snow surface below the feet is in not even and evenly firm. There are a lot of stabilization moves, your foot has to perform. Sliding to the sides, slipping back, sinking in. When running at a faster pace you want to keep an upright running posture and the upper body shouldn’t move left or right. That doesn’t quite work as well when you run on snow. I guess it wouldn’t be possible (for me) to do a 10k race in 35mins (3:30min/km on average), but an 18k  training run in 4:05 min/km was ok.

Tags: winter training