I recently had the the immense chance to be invited to an amazing race in a pristine environment.

I have rarely seen such a beautiful place and had so much pleasure racing on what I would consider one of the best trails, running between 3200m and 4600m high!

I arrived there a week early and the weather had rather been dry every day, however, as I woke up at 4AM for my 50km on race day, I found out that it had snowed all night long and there was a good 20cm layer on the trails!! As I have had experience in all trail conditions and given the amount of runners, I knew that it was going to be a wet and muddy day. However, I was gracefully given the day prior a pair of waterproof socks by LEAKDRY, which I heard had the amazing properties of being fully waterproof. My entire running team of 12 athletes were also given these socks and all of us decided that today was a perfect race to test them out.

At 6:00 AM, my 50km mountain run started. It got very wet right away. I very quickly started walking in some deep sections of snow and knew that this would be the first test. 

However, as my shoes went deep into the snow, I barely felt any cold sensations on my feet. This was a very positive first start and motivated for the rest of the race. As other runners had started prior to me, very fast, the trail became a giant mud path with the snow melting and mixing with dirt. Huge pools of water were forming on the route, some of them simply impossible to avoid.  

Running through the pools do give the impression that the feet are getting wet at first, but it s actually just an impression. The reason why, is although your feet stay dry, the cold feeling of the ice water getting into contact with the sock cannot be prevented. 

The cold is just conducted through the sock, but the water stays outside!!! 

It was a long race, and I spent many hours running in the mud, my shoes which were originally bright orange turned into brown. However, I was totally amazed that although I spent all day running in mud pools, wet snow and creeks, my shoes being completely soaked, my feet still felt dry and warm! A tough race saved by my LEAKDRY socks!