For those of us that live in the parts of the world which receive snow and ice during the winter, performing effective training sessions outdoors can be difficult.
An example would be the classic workout of Yasso 800’s.
During the summer I would simply run to the track and perform 10 x 800m roughly at 5k race pace with 200-400m jogging recovery.
However, during the winter went the outdoor track is completely covered in snow this workout becomes impossible to exactly replicate.
So what do I do?
What I would instead recommend for this workout would be to simply perform the run on as cleanly paved of a path as possible.
In my neck of the woods Rapid City typically does a great job keeping the bike path clean. I’ll do 90% of my quality workouts on the bike path when there is snow on the ground. I’ve also noticed that the steepest roads in town are the best plowed. This
With the 800m repetition workout, you have a couple options. You can either use your GPS to track 800m or .5mile and use it as you would a track to do a distance repetition. Another option (and my preferred) is to simply determine how long the repetitions would normally take you and run at a hard perceived exertion for that duration. Recently instead of doing 15x1k hard + 1:00 jog I did 15 x 4:00 hard + 1:00 jog, for example.
I’ve also noticed that the steepest roads in town are the best plowed. This makes doing hill workouts in the winter quite easy, actually!