The Curio

I've been whining about the poor running conditions here in the UK for some time now, to the point that even I'm sick of hearing it. Actually, it turns out that I'm not the only one in the World who finds it difficult to run in snow and ice conditions. Who'd have thought it?

Anyway, armed with a few well-aimed Googles, I found this article about customising old running shoes for slippery conditions by screwing in hex-headed screws in to the soles. Brilliant!  Why didn't I think of this?  I immediately set about finding similar hardware to make my own "screw shoes".

My first problem was that I couldn't find similar hex headed screws as the ones recommended in the article. So I've made do with the pan-headed ones in the first picture below. I reckoned that 1/2 inch No. 8 screws would be best overall. The pack cost me about £2.50.

Next I needed a pair on donor shoes. For me, this was an easy choice. My old Inov-8 Flyroc 310's were perfect (pictures 2 & 3) Trail shoes, with many miles on them. If you're in the market for off-road shoes, you could do worse than check out Inov-8 products. Serious kit.

Then the task of screwing in the screws. My initial choices for locations you can see in picture 4, but a quick test run once the other shoe was complete led me to discover that placing the screws in the middle of the heel or ball of the foot areas is not a good idea. You can feel the screw quite a bit, and I felt that after an hour or so this would actually become quite painful.

I finally settled upon the layout as shown in the final picture.  But would they work?

It turns out that I would get my chance to find out this very morning, when my part of NW England was covered with 4-6 inches of fresh snow over ice. Perfect. 10k trail run around my beloved Pennington Flash.

The results were quite encouraging. On deep fresh snow, it wasn't really possible to notice any effect, but on compacted snow and ice, the difference was considerable. Maybe not as good as the hex-headed screws which probably bite in to the ice more effectively than the pan-headed ones, but they certainly made the difference between being able to run, or having to mope around the house, swearing at the weather and annoying the rest of the family. 

I also learned that running through deep snow is actually pretty tough. The foot never quite manages to flatten the snow, meaning that you're effectively running with your foot pointing slightly upwards after each foot strike, placing a strain on the back on the lower leg. But that's another story.