Notes
Went out to Bradbury Mountain this morning with Erin to meet up with the Trail Monsters. It was a smaller crowd this week, and conditions were a little tougher to run in.
The snow was packed down but not very solid, so there was a lot of slipping and sliding, especially off of the power line trails which thankfully had been groomed.
On the groomed sections, we were running around 8 minute pace; the rest of the way we ran mostly 10-12 minute pace.
I was pretty tired by the time we got back to the park, but I wanted another mile or 2 and Erin wasn't at the car anyway. I decided to try heading out on the boundary trail, but thankfully I saw Erin coming down it in her snowshoes before too long because conditions weren't great if you didn't have them. She ran for about 70 minutes and then snowshoed the rest of the time I was out running.
It was very cold at the start, between -1 and -6 depending upon if you were in the sun or not. My hydration pack tubing was frozen solid even though there wasn't much water in it so I wasn't able to use it until mile 9 after running a few miles with the backpack under my jacket and the tub stuffed between my back and the bag.
After that, I just had a 4 inch cylinder of ice that I eventually managed to get to slide around inside the tube enough to get a little water around it, which then melted it pretty quick so I was able to drink the water and not just carry it for the last 6 miles.
I also got to try out the ice spikes for the first time, and they worked out pretty well. They were very comfortable, and helped on some of the downhill sections. I'm looking forward to trying them out in icy conditions.
Once we got back to the parking lot, Erin drove me home while I finished off the remaining gummy bears and ate a partially frozen banana.