Icy conditions have made fell running training a little difficult recently.
Although deep snow is difficult to run through it is actually great for training. You have to work harder as the snow provides resistance to your forwards movement, you have to lift your knees higher and so bring into play muscles that you don’t normally use and if you do fall over (which is inevitable) you usually end up with a soft landing.
The problems start when conditions underfoot are icy such as when the snow melts during the day then refreezes at night or where it gets compressed into a hard, frozen layer. I have been asked by several people recently how I continue training when it gets icy.
One way is to use Micro-spikes. I use Kahtoola. These are basically scaled down walking crampons that simply attach to your shoe and are held in place by stretchy rubber. They can be put on in around 10 seconds per foot and taken off in a fraction of that. Reasonably small and light I simply carry them in my bum bag or rucksack and put them on when needed.
I find them a really great piece of kit which allow me to keep training on terrain that might otherwise be too difficult to run on.
The video shows you how easy they are to use:
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