What are you guys doing for winter interval sessions this year when it snows?

I am a New Englander & in my youth I always used winter for base building. I guess you could measure, with a car or bike, a section of well plowed road, bike path or trail.

Well, I would think 400s would work given not too slippery conditions, but 200s might be more tricky because you depend on very good grip to not get any injuries or constrain the running form. I am actually thinking that 25-30s moderate hills are better. You could think that slipping is even worse, but it gets more controlled regardless. Things change so fast these days that soon you are back indoor and with some fast power stuff in hills, you might just improve.

You have an option as I do to use track or XC spikes on firm snowy conditions and even on icy conditions. You would get good grip and could do 200s well. Just change for the 200s as you might do indoor.

If you can do a mile on the road, why can't you do a 200 on the road? I do 100 and 200 intervals in my neighborhood all the time in the winter. My town is pretty good at plowing the streets when it snows, and the streets are usually clear within 24 or 48 hours after a big snow. Sure, the neighbors think I'm crazy, but they also think I'm crazy for literally running all over town.

Treadmill or intervals on cross country skiing.

If I can, I measure out road intervals in the bougie neighborhoods that get plowed early and often. My other usual option is to run in a parking garage. A small school five story lot could be 1.2miles all the way up and down

I just go by time equivalent on the roads, figuring exact distance isn't all that important. You can also set up a GPS-based interval workout on some watches, though I feel like the GPS error would make short intervals pretty variable.

If you are not training for indoors, you said you were post-grad, then train for outdoors.

If you were a knife maker you'd harden your steel before trying to put a sharp, long lasting edge on it.

Build your base over the winter. Increase milage slowly, 5-10% weekly. If the road conditions are favorable, no snow or ice, run strides after base run to keep in touch with speed/fast twitch muscles.

Also, run doubles if possible. And believe it or not, taking short naps after runs is also good.

Good Luck!

Hills and tempos don’t need a track. During the winter you should be doing hills and tempos.

I know a guy who'd sneak out super early in the morning and shovel lane 1 of the track. He considered shoveling a cross training workout.

Alternatively:

Yaktrax for slippery conditions. Fartlicks. Tempos. Hills or stair workouts at tall buildings. Treadmill for those super windy frigid soul crushing days. Strides in a long hallway/basketball court/ plowed salted parking lot, etc. after recovery and easy runs.

Most municipalities have at least one fairly well maintained salted and shoveled park walking path or very lightly traveled roadway where you can get your workouts in. Bring a wheel and measure a section or run by time.

Perhaps consider snowshoeing or cross country skiing if you get significant accumulations of snow and it's not feasible to run (you can modify your running workout to train using heartrates zones instead of pacing for snowshoes/xc skies.).

The positive is there really are only a few occasions where the conditions are so bad that you can't at the very least complete a variation of your intended workout.

Iced Man wrote:

Hills and tempos don’t need a track. During the winter you should be doing hills and tempos.

The Ingebrigtsens run 1500, but are well trained also for 5k with their approach. They think that the main ability is to be so aerobically well trained that they can cope with a fast pace through 1500, 3k or 5k and still have energy to do a long kick (progess the last 400-200-100). Those with a lower critical velocity (CV) or anaerobic threshold, will expend the anaerobic reserve too much and will not be able to respond to the long kick.

They in the winter do 100 and 200 sprints weekly to maintain top speed, but not as a workout and rather as add on an evening or two a week. But they do 5 out of 6 workouts as threshold intervals as 5/6min, 1k and 60-90sec rep lengths always below 3.5 in lactate. Rest 60-60 and 30s. Then they do 1 weekly workout as 2x10x200m moderate hill reps at mile effort (lactate <10?). This is to get strength and to maintain an anaerobic capability relevant for 1500. They focus on having a wide enough lactate dynamic range which relates to both how efficient one runs at threshold, but also how sustainable one can run at a high lactate. This ability need maintenance of anaerobic work also through the base phase.

They do not use tempos though, but run their longer reps of 5-6min at more M-pace than HM pace. The 1k or 60-90s reps are at HM->3k pace as long as the lactate is below 3.5

just do what you have to do, even in the snow. of course you are much slower in deep snow and it´s harder, just adjust your intervals, even if it's more like fast skipping. i always look forward to the snow season, i have the feeling that it is better for the overall fitness.

My sport was orienteering (running with a map wild in the forest), in Norway, and we avoided roads as much as possible even in snowy conditions. I have ran a lot of my training on and in the snow. It has some benefits and some drawbacks towards track running.

The benefits are that the general aerobic conditioning is larger due to that you work harder with the quads and hips in slippery and snowy conditions. The quads get a better workout. That COULD translate to becoming better at tolerating hard work at the track.

BUT, slippery or soft surface conditions reduces the work for the calfs and changes the running form to the degree it is counterproductive for the efficient running form for mile/3k. Be sure to have good friction and consistent strides. When running slower it is no problem, but faster it can be. With spikes this can be improved.

Are you peaking indoors? Otherwise indoors is more for base building. That fast stuff can be short hill repeats. In the northeast really its about getting as much work in as you can and working around the weather as best you can. I have had perfect weeks and weeks where we get four storms and I can only do one hard workout. Where i live now and can’t even do strides on my road as its icey all winter. So instead i do strides in the final two miles of my run finishing right went i hit my road. This is how i prefer to do my strides now even in the summer.

Setting the treadmill to 10% incline and doing hill Intervals.

But I'm lucky, it doesn't snow much in the East Midlands of UK 😂 just flat farmland for miles on end.

Wisconsin here, try a treadmill or switching your days... come one dude. Did you need to post this?

Something like 1 min on / 1 min off on the roads might be your friend. Similar stimulus. Not the end of the world at the end of the day.

I am not planning on peaking in the winter but indoor track is huge where I am from. BU is a stones throw away from me and the atmosphere at those races is insane, I wanted to race a fast BU time at least once this winter.

Treadmill workouts are good for tempos and maybe mile repeats max, I could get pretty fit with that but unfortunately most treadmills I have access to max out at 4:25 pace.

200s and 400s at 800 and mile pace are almost impossible to do on anywhere but a track. I’m not going to go 4:10 pace on the road, tbh I don’t even think I could have a successful workout at that speed on the road.

It’s unfortunate because pre covid I had access to a lot of indoor tracks as a post collegiate. I didn’t even mind paying a small fee for them because it was worth it to get a good workout in for the price of a McDonald’s lunch.

Grab a few friends shovel 1 lane on the track before it freezes over.

That's a great way to damage a track.