Ice, Ice, Baby!

Everybody STOP!

...no, really STOP! That ice was brutal on Sunday. With the other clinic instructor sick, I was representing.

At first, I was really excited when none of my clinic runners were showing up. Maybe I could just jump back in the car and head home?! At -27C outside, I was more than happy for this option. But two showed up at the last minute, so out we went.

The goal: 7k
The weather: -22C, but "feels like" -27C with wind chill...as every Canadian can appreciate, in winter we have two weathers: the temperature weather and the wind chill weather

We stuck to the route near home, just in case anybody got the chills and needed to go inside. I was only slightly worried about the cold, since I can now say "been there, done that" ever since New Year's Eve. But the ice! The ice was killer!

At first the ice was covered in a pleasant 3 inches of snow, which provided some grip. This still proved tricky, as every step resulted in small slip. I naively thought it was pretty icy out. Then when we were halfway through our 7k, a city worker could be found kindly sweeping up the snow in a machine. Or at least, I thought it was kindness.

But unfortunately it meant we hit the trail between the snow clearing and the sanding. Meaning: ZERO traction. The ice turned treacherous. I'm talking, we could barely walk without slipping...it was more of a "shuffle glide" sort of move. Luckily, we were close to our one minute walk-break. This turned into a 3-minute walk break until we were passed the worst of the ice.

But then we had a problem: with 3k to go we had completed the loop. The slick, freshly cleared trails gleamed at us with icy nastiness. What to do?

We took a shorter circuit the next time, having determined that the far side of the river proved far less icy. I managed to figure us a way back (avoiding as much of the icy patches as possible) at a nifty 6.96km.

Half-heartedly, I offered for those wanting to get in the full 7k we could keep going another 40m. This was happily shot down by the clinic runners.

Understandably, we went back into the store to do our cool down stretches.

My hips ached all that day and the next...I think it was from all the stabilizing I was doing trying not to slip in that ice. I am T-5 days out from an epic trip to SE Asia and I'll be darned if I sprain my ankle before I go!