making lemonade
as the say goes, if life hands you lemons…well, in this case – – snow…make the best of it. in that spirit i headed to the retzer nature center this afternoon with my snowshoes. i bought the snowshoes in july a few years back and haven’t got much use out of them. the only other time i had run with them was right after a significant snow in the park a quarter mile from home. since the snow was fresh, i sank down way too far to be able to walk…let alone run.
the retzer nature center allows snowshoe-rs on their trails in the winter, which is great because over time the trails get compacted down which makes for easier running. i initially headed south to the back portion of the park and did a loop around a section that is rather swampy during the summer. i then ran across a prairie section and into a wooded area of trails. the whole area is heavily glaciated so the hills were plentiful. i then made my way back towards the trailhead with 2 miles recorded on my garmin.
i roughly repeated my initial loop then improvised a bit to roll 5 miles in 61:36 (12:19/mile). what a blast! a little change of pace was just what i needed. honestly, it’s pretty easy to run on the snowshoes – – even up/down hill. on 1/25, there’s 5k and 10k snowshoe races associated with the badger state games. depending on weather and our schedule, maybe i’d head up to wausau to participate.