03Winter
Winter on packed snow: what actually changes on the riverside
Between December and March the surface under the embankment path changes every few days, and the run has to change with it. These are the three kinds of winter footing we get here, what each one does to a pace, and the fortnight when we leave the river alone.
8 min readWritten 28 January 2025Revised 19 Feb 2025Kaunas
Three kinds of winter underfoot
There is no single winter here, there are three, and each wants something different from you. Packed snow is the good one: a few centimetres trodden flat by walkers over a couple of days, dry, quiet, with more grip than dry tarmac and a surface that gives back about as much as a running track. Fresh deep snow is slow and harmless and fine for a shorter loop. Ice under a thin film of water is the one that ends evenings, and it forms on the lower path where the January sun never reaches.
Telling them apart from a warm room is impossible, so one of us walks the first three hundred metres before we start, which sounds fussy and costs four minutes. What we are listening for is whether the surface squeaks. Snow that squeaks underfoot is cold and dry and will hold you; snow that is silent and slightly grey has been walked on above zero and will be glass by half past six. That one test has rerouted more of our evenings than any forecast ever has.
Said on the run
- Packed dry snow: more grip than tarmac, run it normally
- Fresh deep snow: slower, safe, shorten the loop
- Grey and silent underfoot means refreezing; leave the lower path
- Black ice sits wherever the sun stops reaching after December
Pace and effort come apart
Pace stops meaning much in midwinter, and pretending otherwise is how people end up disappointed by a perfectly good run. On packed snow in still air we lose maybe fifteen seconds a kilometre for the same effort. In deep snow it can be two minutes, and the legs come home feeling as though they have done hill repeats, because in a sense they have. Effort is the thing that stays constant through all of it, and the only honest way to measure effort in January is whether the conversation is still going.
The other change is how long warming up takes. In July the group is running properly within four hundred metres. At minus eight it takes the best part of two kilometres, and the first of those feels dreadful for everybody, which is worth saying at the start because otherwise each person privately assumes it is only them. We begin slower than slow in winter, close to a shuffle, and nobody looks at anybody else's feet for the first ten minutes.
Clothes, lights and the wind off the water
The wind off the rivers is what makes the cold here specific. Minus ten among the oaks is comfortable; minus four on the open embankment with a westerly on the way back is not, and the way back is always the second half. We dress for the return leg rather than the first kilometre, which means starting slightly too cold and knowing why. Three thin layers beat two thick ones, and the layer that matters most is whichever one keeps the wind off the front of your thighs.
By December it is dark before we start and dark when we finish. The embankment lamps are good on the Neris side and patchy on the Nemunas side, with two long gaps where the path runs behind a hedge. Everybody carries a light, and at least one person runs at the back with a red one, because cyclists use the same path and arrive silently from behind at exactly the moment a group has strung out. None of this is complicated. It only has to be decided before you leave the house.
Said on the run
- Dress for the return leg, not for the first kilometre
- Three thin layers, and something windproof across the thighs
- A light each from October, and a red one at the back
- Gloves you can actually run in beat a warmer jacket
The fortnight we leave the river
Two or three times a winter, usually in the second half of January, the lower path turns into a skating rink for a fortnight. Salt reaches the road but not the embankment, and one thaw followed by a hard night is enough to do it. When that happens we stop arguing and move the run up to the oak wood, where sand holds snow differently and the tree cover keeps the worst of the melting and refreezing off the paths. The loop is shorter, the climb is unavoidable, and nobody minds much.
Lampėdis, the lake on the western edge of the city, is the other winter option, and on a clear cold Sunday it is the best running of the year: a flat circuit, hard snow, almost nobody else out. Getting there and back takes forty minutes, which rules it out on a Tuesday evening and makes it a weekend thing. We went out four times last February. Twice it was perfect, once it rained sideways, and once we turned round in the car park and drove home without running, which is also allowed.