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Train the Mind to Run Right Through Winter
Personal Best
Train the Mind to Run Right Through Winter
By GINA KOLATA
IN late summer, Sharon Henderson, the manager of the Lululemon athletic clothing
store in my town, started organizing Saturday morning group runs. People had two
options: three miles at a slower pace or six miles at a faster one.
There was a good turnout at first – more than two dozen people, most of them slower
runners, showed up.
Then they stopped coming. Was it the string of gray, rainy Saturdays?
Granted, it is difficult to get up and be at Lululemon by 8:30 a.m. when the temperature
is dropping and a steady rain is falling. But, still. One recent Saturday, it was
just me and my friend Claire Brown running on the slick streets in the rain.
Very few studies have asked whether people exercise less in inclement weather and,
if so, which ones are more likely to slack off or forge ahead. Maybe that’s because
the results of the studies are not exactly surprising.
“Why do people work out more in San Diego than in Michigan?” asked James Pivarnik,
an exercise physiologist at the Michigan State University. “Gee, I can’t imagine.”
HIS study of Michigan residents found that people expended 15 to 20 percent more
calories a week exercising in the spring and summer than they did in the fall and
winter.
Something similar seems to happen in Columbus, Ohio, said Janet Buckworth, an exercise
physiologist at Ohio State University.
She found that college students lost cardiovascular fitness in winter but maintained
their strength, indicating that while some of them did not want to go outside and
run, at least they may have been going to the gym.
“Columbus is incredibly dreary in the winter,” Dr. Buckworth said. “It is wet and
cold, and we get snow.” (more)
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