The weekend after Thanksgiving in Sacramento, California, normally serves up some of the best marathon-racing weather in the nation. But when 7,368 runners lined up for the start of the 2013 California International Marathon (CIM)—a race that typically boasts fast times and many Olympic Marathon Trials qualifiers—they were greeted by something else: temperatures in the mid-20s with the added insult of a chilly breeze.
It was so cold that water spills at aid stations froze to the pavement, creating slick spots that took hours to melt. Many runners finished without ever seeing a temperature above freezing.
“Everyone was huddled by the start, trying to keep warm,” says Christina Overbeck-Crawford, who waited for the race to begin in a hooded down jacket more suitable for the ski slopes than a marathon start. Others like pro runner Lindsey Scherf, a 1:11 half marathoner, were wearing five layers on top and three on the bottom.
DAA Industry Opt Out Running in the Cold: Cold muscles are more easily pulled, frostbite is insidious, beware of the wind chill. For training, the standard advice is to wear what’s needed to keep warm and figure you’re still getting a good workout, even bulked up in fleece tights or a flappy windbreaker. (Our The weekend after Thanksgiving in Sacramento, California, normally serves up some of the best can help you figure out what’s best for your workout or race.)
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At the hotel where the professional field was staying the day before CIM, there was only one thing on everyone’s mind. “Every time I [encountered] other runners,” Scherf says, “the first question was, ‘What are you wearing tomorrow?’ It was question number one in everyone’s conversation.”
On the one hand was the fear of hypothermia—on the other, the fear that tights would slow them down. But there was also peer pressure. “Who ever heard of someone winning an elite race in tights?” Scherf asks.
Luckily, there are a number of ways to combat cold weather racing problems, whether you’re doing a 5K or a marathon.
- as thousands of runners encounter cold-induced diuresis. Run by effort, not the clock.
- Stay warm during the race. Sure, tights may feel confining or slightly impede your stride. But that minor impediment early in the race may pay big dividends later on, especially in a marathon. “From my readings, 51 degrees is optimal for marathoning," says Lindsey Scherf, pro distance runner. "So the best plan is to try to artificially re-create this temperature for the muscles.”
- Winter Cold Weather Running. “It’s much Reasons You Should Run in the Cold than to find what you don’t have,” says Layne Anderson, who coaches the University of Tennessee.
- Remember that a critical rule of racing is never do anything in a race—especially a marathon—that you haven’t practiced. That also applies to running in the cold. “And I’ve definitely not practiced doing a long run in shorts at 25 degrees,” Scherf notes. If conditions are so chilly that you’d never dream of running a speed workout in shorts, why risk a race?
- Modify your prerace routine to make staying warm at the start your top priority. Hit a thrift store and buy the warmest disposable clothing you can find. Also, look for warm places nobody else has found. Keeping warm before the race can also offset cold-induced diuresis. “I didn’t go to the bathroom any more than I normally would,” says Christina Overbeck-Crawford, an elite marathoner.
- Be careful not to get sweaty during your warmup unless you can keep moving right up to the start of the race. There’s a reason mountaineers and cross-country skiers often refer to rest breaks as “freeze breaks.” Standing around in sweaty clothes waiting for the gun to go off can rapidly undo whatever good a vigorous warm-up might have done.
- Anticipate long toilet lines, The weekend after Thanksgiving in Sacramento, California, normally serves up some of the best. Similarly, anticipate an enormous last-minute scrum for the gear check. Have at least one layer of throwaway clothing that you can wear right up until the start, or even for the first few miles.
- Richard A. Lovett. They may give back some of the energy you lost shivering at the start or help preserve glycogen reserves being abnormally taxed by the cold.
By race day, almost all of the pros (and many of the age-group competitors behind them) had decided to go with tradition, wearing as little as possible on the legs and trusting to long-sleeve tops, hats, gloves—and the effort of the race—to keep warm. “I don’t remember seeing many in tights,” Overbeck-Crawford says.
But is freeing your legs actually the best approach? Not necessarily, say many sports scientists who’ve studied the issue.
In part, that’s because at cold temperatures, the chill can penetrate beyond the skin at least into the outer fibers of the leg muscles. This could lower the temperature of those outer fibers by as much as a couple of degrees Celsius (3 to 4 degrees Fahrenheit), says Stuart Galloway, If in doubt, err on the side of overdressing.
This temperature drop has several effects. One is that blood vessels contract as the body attempts to protect its core by reducing heat loss through the skin. That’s a good thing if you’re stranded in the wilderness, but in a race, it deprives the muscles of oxygen.
Compounding this is the effect of cold on hemoglobin, the molecule that carries oxygen from the lungs to where it’s needed, in the muscles. “Normally, the optimum is when the temperature is 98.6 degrees,” says Robert Girandola, an associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Southern California. “When the temperature goes down, [the oxygen exchange] is much more difficult.” Again, chilled muscles get less oxygen. It’s the equivalent of a drop in VO2 max.
That’s just the beginning. With reduced oxygen, muscles must rely more heavily on anaerobic metabolism, which means increased use of glycogen. Prerace shivering can also dip into glycogen stores—as can cold-induced stress hormones, which may cause the body to use glycogen more rapidly than would normally be the case.
“The overall effect is a faster rate of glycogen depletion,” Galloway says.
Muscle function itself may also be impeded. “Cooler muscle has less endurance,” says John Halliwill, an exercise physiologist at the University of Oregon. “Some [researchers] have suggested there is a lower speed of nerve conduction. Or, perhaps we aren’t able to recruit some of the muscle fibers that are close to the surface and too cold to function normally. There is also a theory that cooling of skin thermoreceptors will lead to an increase in muscle tension (a precursor to shivering) and that this reduces our running economy."
Overbeck-Crawford describes the result as feeling a bit “herky-jerky” in her stride, even though the pace was well within her aerobic comfort range. “It was just a little too cool to feel completely fluid and comfortable,” she says.
Scherf agrees, even though she and Overbeck-Crawford were among the few seeded runners who chose to race in tights. “The pounding and downhills felt more jarring,” she says, “and the muscles felt less like they wanted to work with you on the uphills. It’s like your muscles don’t want to cooperate.” (Ultimately, she strained a quad, despite the tights, and dropped out to avoid further injury.)
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Yet another cold-weather racing problem is a condition called cold-induced diuresis: a rather startling need to pee soon after stepping into a cold environment. It stems from the same constriction of blood vessels that deprives the muscles of oxygen.
In warm temperatures, Galloway says, veins near the skin contain a substantial amount of blood. But when the body drives this blood inward in order to conserve heat, blood pressure in the core starts to rise. To protect from this, the kidneys go into overdrive. Again, if you’re trapped in the wilderness, this is a sensible adaptation. But the side effect is that when the race starts, you're already dehydrated.
Cold weather won’t automatically produce a bad performance. Laura Cadiz did everything right at CIM and ran a 2:53:00, a 5-minute PR. And years earlier, Jack Daniels, author of Daniels’ Running Formula, had a similar experience. “I ran my best-ever marathon on a day when the temperature was a high of 39 degrees,” he says. “Many factors affect how different people respond to weather conditions."
Ultimately, you are the expert on your own body. If you’re good in cold, you might be able to wear shorts and a light top when others are bundled to the gills. But if you’re unsure, don’t succumb to peer pressure just because everyone else is doing the same.
