1. WINTER TRAINING. What is the best type of alternate winter training for a middle-aged female marathoner who is stuck in snow country for the first time in years? Should women concerned with preventing osteoarthritis engage in impact-style aerobic exercise?

Bev Lawrence, St. Paul, Minn.

STUCK? I like to think of living in snow country as a blessing. What to do in the winter months? Continue running, unless your health will not allow it. If your health is in question, it is wise to check with your physician before you begin physical exertion in the winter. There are risks of cold injury and poor traction. Poor traction raises the risk of falls and bone fractures. Extreme cold raises the risk of frostbite and hypothermia. I use the following guidelines to run year-round in the St. Paul area:

• Temperature warmer than minus 20 degrees F and windchill factor warmer than minus 40 degrees F
• No fresh snow around the freezing mark (traction is poor around freezing and gets better as the temperature drops)
• No bare ice
• Dress for the conditions with a synthetic underlayer and one to two midlayers (as needed), covered with a breathable wind shell
• No cotton materials
• Use a hat and mittens
• Use a thin balaclava to cover the cheeks and chin
• Use the hood on the jacket
• Wear eye protection if it’s windy
• Use a vapor barrier for the genitals and breasts if you’re not using a wind shell layer
• Use vapor barrier socks for extreme cold
• Start into the wind and finish with the wind
• Run during daylight hours and be visible (wear a color that contrasts with the snow)
• Tell someone where you are going and when you expect to be back
• Run with a buddy whenever possible
• Stay well hydrated
• Stretch indoors

Take advantage of the winter months to Nordic ski, snowshoe, or ice skate. There are many parks with trails for skiing and snowshoeing, often with rentals and lessons available. There are also outdoor and indoor ice skating rinks in easy reach of the city and suburbs. I find the gliding of winter sports takes a lot of pressure off sore joints and makes my runs more enjoyable in both winter and summer. Although the impact of these activities is not as “bone protective” as running, something is better than nothing.

If you cannot or will not tolerate the cold, you still have options. Move into the health clubs and malls for indoor running. In-line skate at the dome. Buy a treadmill, stationary bike, rowing machine, or Nordic ski machine and exercise in the comfort of your home.

The best way to survive winter is to be out in it and enjoy it to its fullest. If you choose to stay indoors, you may end up with cabin fever and on some expensive medications.

Dr. William Roberts is in private practice with MinnHealth Family Physicians and MinnHealth SportsCare Consultants in White Bear Lake, Minn., and is president of the International Marathon Medical Directors Association.

THE EXPERIENCES of those who have lived in “snow country” for years have your problem solved. Olympic marathoner Janis Klecker (1992) very much enjoyed snowshoeing. Top-level marathoner Jennifer Martin found cross-country skiing a mainstay of outdoor training. Klecker lived in the Minneapolis area, Martin in snow-bound Erie, Pennsylvania. Klecker found a variety of cross-training modalities useful in the health club she joined with her parents. Such activities as swimming, Stair-Master, and stationary bike riding were an accompaniment to treadmill running. Indoors or out, staying fit “in the Arctic” should be doable, given today’s hi-tech fabrics for outdoor wear and the variety of activities available in health clubs.

Dave Martin, PhD, is the author of Better Training for Distance Runners and is a member of this magazine’s Science Advisory Board.

PERHAPS A change of attitude would help you with your change of latitude. Please don’t think of yourself as being “stuck” in snow country. Learning to love the winter season and adapting to snow training will help your year become a more balanced and complete cycle. Training in the snow can be a fun and exciting way of maintaining your fitness level without exposing your bones and joints to the pounding that often comes from long summer and fall training runs, especially those over roads and paved surfaces.

As a lawyer, my answer must include this obligatory disclaimer: I am not a doctor, and I know very little about the medical and biological background to your question, other than an interest in my own mother’s potential for osteoporosis and osteoarthritis (she is also “middle-aged”). My answer is based on conversations with some health professionals and trainers and some reading in an anatomy and physiology text.

Osteoarthritis is the degeneration of cartilage to the point where the bony ends of your bones touch, and, assuming the condition progresses, the friction of bone-on-bone causes further harm. As with osteoporosis, the condition of porous bones, osteoarthritis commonly occurs in women when their estrogen levels decrease as they age and go through menopause. These conditions are also common to marathoners of either gender, those with bad diets, and young adults and teens who suffer from eating disorders.

Without going into the physiology of osteoarthritis, weight-bearing activities, such as weight-lifting, running, snowshoeing, skating, and cross-country skiing, help bones retain mass, countering the deleterious effects of both osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.

Regarding impact-style aerobic activity, from what I have learned, as long as you are engaged in activity that increases the blood flow to your bones (i.e., weight-bearing and aerobic), you will be doing your body a favor. The exercise doesn’t have to be high-impact so you needn’t sign up with your local ice hockey team. If you have not done so yet, I highly recommend snowshoeing as a great crossover from running. You will probably work your hip flexors, adductors, and abductors more than you’re used to, but otherwise the workout is quite similar to your marathon training.

For a twist, try skate skiing, especially if you use in-line skating and bicycling as cross-training tools during the warmer seasons. Finally, on days when it is really nasty outside, hitting the gym for some weight-lifting, rope-skipping, aerobics, yoga, spinning, and machine-based workouts will do your bones some good.

Adam Chase is a sponsored snowshoe racer and ultramarathoner who lives in Boulder, Colorado. He is the president of the All American Trail Running Association.