Where can you run during the winter if you don’t have access to an indoor track? Can you run on the gym in sneakers? Any ideas? Is it productive to run in the cold on the track as long as there isn’t any snow?
bump i want to know too 
In my area (northern ontario), we have no indoor track so the local hockey arena is used to run in (behind the stands) or local highschools in the hall. One of the local track clubs uses rubber matts (types that track equipment companies sell) in the halls.
There is a 60m strip in the warehouse where I have my office, which I use. you can at least get up to 45m before you have to start slowing down. And it is always warm enough to train. I consider myself extra lucky to have this facility.
One word of caution: running indoors on a surface not made for running can lead to injuries. I used to train 3 times a week in a school which had linoleum floors probably with concrete underneath. Twice a week we did speed work above a hockey rink on the circular concourse that ran around the arena. That surface was concrete. I had bone spurs on both ankles, a bruised metatarsal and other numerous aches and pains from running on ******** surfaces. I quit running track due to injury frustration. When I started coaching later, that city then had 3 indoor
tracks, and we would do pool workouts once a week.
Run on grass as long as you can if it is not frozen and slippery, or not
too cold to train at all outside.
In our town we have 2 soccer fields covered with fake grass(warm cables under), which is a bit harder then natural grass, but perfect to do my sprint training in the winter. It can be slippery when doing sprints in flats, but with spikes its no problem. I will avoid doing sprint training on very hard surfaces
I’m down in Louisiana and though it doesn’t get as cold down here as it does in Ontario considering that we are used to 90 degree weather when the winter comes it is around 32 degress so we are freezing. We still practice outside on our high school track unless we have the option of going to LSU’s indoor track. But mostly we train outside.
…Move to California.
Seriously, I feel for you guys who live in colder climates such as Ontario. I listened to my JC athletes bitch about it being 50 today and they had to train. I echo Carson’s concerns when it comes to running on non track surfaces, be careful. Really, the only way to get those quality workouts are to suck it up and do as much as you can outdoors. That is easy for me to say, I never have weather that is too bad to send us indoors. I guess those days you definitely can’t make it outside are good days to do plyos in the gym or circuit work, ladder drills, hurdle drills, form work, etc…
There was a thread on cold weather training last year. Search through the archives. A lot of good advice has already been covered on this subject.
One technique that Gerard Mach used in Poland (now that’s cold) was to use extended running A’s in place of special endurance runs during cold weather. If it gets too cold to sprint properly (even with Underarmour-type clothing), you might just have to settle for running A’s and increased emphasis on more general training like plyos and med ball throws. Again, there’s what we would like to do and what we can do, and you just have to adapt the best you can.
We’re lucky. We have an older school with carpeted hallways. Carpet is over wood. It has a nice bounce to it, but not so much that it feels unnatural. Length is not the greatest, but we can get a good 30 - 40m, before we have to slow down. We try to get in there 2 days per week.
A field 30 seconds walk from my home, 2 rugby pitches on it,
not perfectly ideall, especially when it’s been raining and surface gets very soft. But that’s what I’m using at the moment.
i just realized i had an indoor tennis court facility that no one really uses in our area (its at a rec centre that i didnt even knew existed.) the weight room sucks though.