My Winter Running Essentials: Gear

This is part 2 of 3 on my list of winter running essentials.  Read part one on clothing here.

Gear – Firstly, I should mention my thoughts on winter.  The cold I don’t mind, but the snow I hate.  You can always bundle up, put on many layers to keep the cold temperatures at bay.  With snow, well it’s difficult to run through.  Enter YakTrax.  These babies keep me upright in the white slippery stuff.  Although they now make a running model, I just have their Pro model and they work great.  Sure, YakTrax won’t let you run through snow a foot deep, but they will let you run on the trodden-down slippery snow/ice that’s left over after the street crews move through.  (Well actually I did run through a quarter mile stretch of foot deep snow I few weeks ago, and, while because of the YakTrax I didn’t slip, I wouldn’t recommend the adventure).  These keep me outside running and have kept me from ever having to join a gym and run on the boring belt of death a treadmill.

Besides the snow and cold, the other villain of winter running is the sun – or the lack thereof it.  If you want to run before work, it’s dark out.  If you want to run after work, well it’s dark out.  In the past I’ve done short runs during my work lunch break.  For anything longer than 3 miles though, I didn’t have enough time (with spending time to change to go run, then coming back to clean up and change again).  My way of getting around this is a good solid headlamp.  This of course has allowed me to run at dusk or even at night.  One thing that I must stress though is that while the headlamp lets you see, you also must wear a reflective vest or other reflective clothing so cars see you.

Lastly for the “gear” section is a piece of gear that I never run or bike without – my Road ID.  After thinking about buying one for the longest time, I finally purchased one this past spring.  Before I always took my ID with me so in the rare case something would happen to me, people (possibly emergency personnel) would know who I am.  Now with the Road ID, not only do I have identification, but it also lists family members’ phone numbers to contact in case of emergency.  As an added plus, I don’t have to have a pocket like I did for my normal ID.  The Road ID is simply on my wrist.  I just keep it on all the time (as I got the Elite model and can just leave it on in the shower, etc.).

And that’s where I’ll end for now.  I know such a cliffhanger right?  I’ll post part three soon.