How to adapt running for cold weather

Aside from the changes in blood pressure, pulse and joint fluid, we want to raise our temperature a little in a warm-up too, to allow increased opening of blood vessels and increased muscle elasticity. It hopefully goes without saying then that if it’s cold where you’re running, your warm-up would ideally be longer. If you’re someone who doesn’t typically perform any warm-up or easy running time at the start of a training session, then definitely add this in during winter to reduce the chances of injury.

As your effort reduces and body temperature drops rapidly, you’ll want to have a shorter active cool down, ideally at a slightly higher exertion rate than you’d use on a moderate or warm day, followed by including more active recovery such as mobility exercises when you’re back inside.

Obviously, morning and evening runs are going to be less appealing due to even lower temperatures, so daytime running is preferable if not necessarily practical. Weekends are of course generally a possibility for most people so it’s worth putting your long runs and recovery runs a bit later than you would during summer.

You’ll cool down quickly when you stop, so avoid longer rest periods when doing intervals. This will probably mean limiting speed work for 5k races which would include higher work rates and longer rests.

You can still include intervals, especially formats such as cruise intervals which can help with training for 10k and above.

Lapped routes allow you to remove hats and gloves easily with a place to leave them safely. This is ideal if you’re running to an area you run loops around as you’ll want the extra clothing before and after the hard, faster paced loops you’ll be running.