working out in winter wonderland

On Monday, I woke up to find white stuff covering the ground.. yep, the first real snow of the winter. It was pretty enough on the trees, and new enough to give the city that cleaner look, and best of all, the Christmas lights downtown sparkle so nicely off of the snow. There wasn’t too much, so it didn’t feel inconvenient; it just seemed appropriate for the upcoming holiday season.

Yesterday, it continued snowing. It piled up a bit, and was slushy, and windy. And the forecast is not much better ~

Um, windchills of -15°? Sudden onset winter! All this makes me want to spend as little time outside as possible. I deal with this every year… but this year, I had finally established a pretty good workout schedule, thanks to training for and running a half-marathon in August. I have a bad habit of slacking off with workouts during the winter, but after getting myself into decent shape, I really want to keep it up. So now the question is, how do I motivate myself to keep working out despite miserable weather conditions outside?


As running outdoors has become less appealing, I’ve been experimenting with gym workouts to keep myself in shape. Signing up for the stairclimb definitely helped motivate myself to get into the routine of going on a more regular basis; it was hard at first, since I’m not a huge fan of treadmills, but the pressure of knowing I’d be climbing 2100 steps made me go and do the stairclimber. Since then, I decided to mix things up by trying out spinning classes for the first time. They are such a good workout! I like how the instructor pushes me to go harder, and how the class goes by so quickly. I also re-discovered the kickboxing class I frequented in the past, before running took over my workouts. This one is a favorite because the instructor plays dancey music and it feels a little like a dance class, which has always been my ultimate favorite in terms of working out. These class workouts, along with my favorite yoga class, have been going pretty well so far. But with the upcoming miniscule temperatures and high winds and more snow, I am afraid I will fall into my old trap of finding excuses not to even make the 10 minute walk to the gym from work.

One possible solution: Sign up for another race. Some friends have been talking about signing up for another half-marathon in May. My hesitations come from the training schedule: if I do a 16 week training program similar to the one I did last summer, that means starting in late January, with longer runs (~ 6+ miles) starting by late February/early March. The early stages during Jan-Feb (2-3 mile runs) would not be bad to do on treadmills, but once I start running over an hour, treadmills are just not fun. And, I’m a wimp about running outside in bad weather. Conditions in March are pretty iffy, with a high probability for snow.

So logistically, I’m worried that training during the winter would be a big pain – but then, maybe if I know I have a set training schedule, I’d do a better job of actually getting myself to run on treadmills, and run outside in less than optimal weather.

Should I just go for it? And hope that it pushes me to be less of a wimp in terms of winter running? Last night, I did manage to get some jogging in – for the two blocks from the bus, as it was a weird slushy snow/rain, and quite cold, and I just wanted to be inside as fast as possible. I had tennis shoes on and found myself jogging through the sludge in order to get home faster. This went surprisingly well considering that I was wearing a coat/hat/scarf, had my work bag, and had just eaten a bunch of Indian food at a lab dinner. But somehow I don’t think that the 2 block jog counts as a real workout :)

So this is what I am currently contemplating… in the meantime, we’ll see how successful I am at getting to the gym - or anywhere at all - with windchills of -15°.