Tips & Tricks for Running in the Winter
1. Prevent slipping with screw shoes or Yak Trax
You can purchase or make your own special shoes that are designed to grip the ice and hard packed snow without sacrificing the comfort and stability of your favorite trainer. You can purchase a pair of Yak Trax from your favorite local running store, which clip on easily to the bottom of your shoe and work great.
If you prefer a homemade and cheaper option, you can make yourself a pair of “screw shoes”. See article below on how to do this.
2. The best place to find paved and clear running paths
Colleges and university roads are the places that clear snow the fastest. Why? Colleges and Universities have their own maintenance departments and are not dependent on the city. Plus, their paths are usually more for walking and there is less automobile traffic.
The next fastest paths and roads to clear up are usually maintenance roads, where plows and salt trucks have to go back and forth; they are great if you can find them.
Finally, run near schools (HS and elementary schools) since administrators clear roads quickly to get teachers and students safely to the classroom. These three places will be the quickest and most frequently plowed paths and streets in your city.
3. If you have to run on the roads, be safe
Run against traffic when running on the roads (many times, sidewalks will not be clear enough to run, which may force you onto the road). When you run against traffic, you can see what’s coming at you, assess what the driver is doing or what they’re looking at, and determine if they see you. If worse comes to worse, you can dive into a snow bank.
4. Stay warm in the wind
Run with the wind in your face on the way out and wind at your back the second half of the route. If you run with the wind at your back the first half of a run, you’ll get hot and sweaty and when you turn around, the wind will get very cold.
Use Vaseline on exposed parts of your skin, such as your face, to help protect from the cold and wind. Vaseline is naturally waterproof and quite windproof. It will help keep your face from “falling off” in bitter winds.
5. Consider a mask if you have allergies or are prone to coughing fits and dry lungs allergy mask cold weather
The cold, dry winter air can cause bronchial spasms, which restricts air from filling the lungs. Running in a light mask can help warm-up the air before it hits your lungs. You don’t want or need a beefy scarf, but a light mask can help filter the air just enough if you tend to have breathing issues, especially when you try to run hard.
6. Don’t be afraid to adjust your workout
If you’re training for an important race, it is crucial that a snow day remains a small inconvenience, not a month long injury from slipping and sliding.
It is much better to move a workout to a different day than end up tweaking a muscle you never knew you had, and ruining your entire season.
Waiting a day can sometimes be the difference between a Winter of consistent and healthy training and a slew of injuries that lasts until Spring.
7. Keep your shoes dry the right way
If you run in slushy or wet conditions, put newspaper in your shoes immediately after your run. The newspaper will soak up the water and help your shoes maintain their structure. Do not put shoes in the dryer or the oven – it will shrink the material and lessen their shelf life.
Also, be aware that the cushioning in your running shoes changes as it gets colder. Cold temperatures will stiffen the foam in the midsole and insole of your running shoes, changing their cushioning properties. Because your shoes are stiffer when running outside in the winter, they cause more localized pressure on the sole of your foot. In many ways, cold shoes are similar to shoes with a lot of miles on them: as shoes age, they also get stiffer as their EVA foam wears out.
8. Hydrate like it’s the Summer
It may be cold and dry outside, and you might not think that you’re sweating, but you could be losing just as much fluid in the Winter as you do in the Summer. It’s important that you rehydrate after each run and stay hydrated throughout the day. You can measure exactly how much sweat you lose on your run with our handy sweat loss calculator for runners.
9. Racing in the cold
Racing in the cold definitely impacts your performance. If you’re interested in the exact data, we looked at all the research in our post on how running in the cold impacts race performance. Some of the findings conclude that:
Your body relies more heavily on carbohydrates and less on fats for its energy.
Your lactate production is higher for a given intensity, indicating that you’re going deeper into “oxygen debt” to produce the necessary energy to maintain a given pace (as evidenced by a higher oxygen consumption rate in colder temperatures).
Your muscle contractions are less powerful, which demands an increase in fast-twitch muscle fiber usage, perhaps explaining the higher lactate production.
The Screw Shoe For Running on Packed Snow and Ice!
By Matt Carpenter, www.skyrunner.com
Do you run on packed snow and ice? Are you tired of slipping and falling? The Screw Shoe is one solution to the problem! By inserting some screws into the bottom of your shoes you will be able to run in the worst conditions. The process is quick, easy and costs next to nothing:-)
I did not invent this concept—it is something that has been passed around from runner to runner. My goal is just to show you how easy it is to make your own Screw Shoes.
Selecting Screws
Sheet metal screws with hex heads are awesome because the head on them has a lip that really grips well on ice. This is important because the screws are inserted from the outside into the bottom of the shoe and it is the head of the screw that provides the traction—not the point! #8 1/2" long screws work fine in most shoes because they do not go through the shoe yet they are long enough that they don’t come out too easily. #8 3/8" screws might be a little safer in the fronts of some shoes. If you have a very thin shoe, or you are just paranoid about how thin the front of your shoe looks, then you can use #6 1/4" long screws. However, they are harder to find and they come out rather easily. No matter what, do not use the screw pictured below right!!!
Where to Buy
Most hardware stores have hex head sheet metal screws. However, if you can’t find them in your area I recommend:
Amazon.com - 100 pack of #8 3/8" Sheet Metal Screws - Good for thinner shoes
Amazon.com - 100 pack of #8 1/2" Sheet Metal Screws - Good for most shoes
Tools
A screwdriver will work but the “fun factor” disappears after about two screws. Further, using a screwdriver to start a screw into rubber may have you using your entire four-letter-word vocabulary!!! A ratchet screwdriver with a 1/4" socket will at least ease the task of starting the screws.
A cordless drill with a magnetic tip and a 1/4" socket can do a shoe in less than a minute and makes the project almost fun! A neat trick here is that most magnetic tips are 1/4" so you won’t even need to track down the 1/4" socket. This setup is so slick it may be worth a trip to the neighbors to borrow theirs if you don’t have one. Or, since most shoe screwing is done in the winter, this could be the perfect x-mas gift for that special crazy runner!
However you go about it, do not over tighten the screws! Stop screwing when the head of the screw touches the rubber so it will stay in longer. I have also heard the claim that pre-drilling a small pilot hole for the screw will help it stay in longer. I tested this theory by pre-drilling one shoe and not the other. Both sets of screws seemed to stay in equally well and the occasional screw that did come out did so randomly from either shoe so I really don’t think this step is worth the extra effort. Now one could argue that pre-drilling would make starting the screws with a screwdriver easier but I would question why anyone who has access to a drill would not simply use it to insert the screws!?
Screw Placement
Pretty much anything goes unless you have “air” or “gel” shoes in which case you will need to be more selective when placing the screws. I have 18 screws in each shoe just because someone else had 17. They had 17 just because someone else had 16, etc. The shoe on the right is my wife Yvonne’s. She has 19—we runners are a competitive lot! As you can see she placed the screws on the treads because placing screws in-between them would be pointless. If you look closely you can see the lip on the screw that was referred to above.
For me the screws in the heel are more important than the ones in the front because I hate falling on my butt when coming down a hill. On really nasty days the Incline Club has been known to bring a box full of screws and a cordless drill to the club runs. The assembly line looks something like this:
Conclusion
That is all there is to the Screw Shoe! I use them mostly in the spring when the warmer days melt the snow and then the water turns to ice during the colder nights. This seems to happen a lot on trails that get a lot of use like the Barr Trail on Pikes Peak. Others use them all winter long on ice covered roads.
Oh, speaking of roads, I usually have to run a mile or so on the roads to get to/from the trails. Other than a hearing a “click, click, click” Screw Shoes work just fine on roads. Yes, it does wear the screw heads out a little faster but again, the screws are cheap:-)
Once winter is over you will not need to buy new shoes because you can just remove the screws. Unless of course you put a bunch of miles on your Screw Shoes—they wear out just like all running shoes!
