First run in ice spikes

One of the hardened steel ice spikes

I had been concerned that I was going to be unable to keep up my running over the winter and knowing me, then my chances of ever getting back to regular exercise would be very slim. I mentioned this to a colleague at work who was apparently feeling the same way and he had been looking around online for something that may help. As it turns out, there are a number of solutions, most of them being an 'over the sole', kind of thing. The ones that Matt had come across were slightly different, they actually screw into the sole of the running shoe, see them here, http://www.icespike.net/.

Heel placement of the spikes

I had decided to take today off as the kids were off and school and looking at the weather it looked like a good time to use my aging Saucony's and convert to my new winter running shoes. The trick here is to put twelve spikes in each shoe, three in each side on the heel and three on each side of the front half of the shoe, trying to avoid the ridges in the sole, about 3/4" (~20m) from the edge of the shoe. For obvious reasons, I cannot use these on my VFF's, as the sole is only 4mm thick. The sire says that the spikes can be removed without damaging the sole of the shoe, although I'm (a) not convinced and (b) it doesn't really matter anyway as the shoe soles and buggered anyway. One major warning here is no walking in them anywhere where there is surface you don't want to bugger up as they will chew up carpet, linoleum, wood, etc, without beaking a sweat.

I decided that I couldn't delay it any longer, Bren had taking the kids out the a local skating rink. There is a fairly good trail, without half a mile from the house that a friend runs regularly. The run involved running along the side of the road for about a quarter of a mile, then some fairly decent trails, with a short paved section, then a quarter mile run back along the side of the road, all in approx 1-2" of snow. All in all, it went very well, I started out a little cautiously and admittedly I never ran across pure ice, I didn't feel any slippage at any time.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/sGZzCEbOZSg