MOST RUNNERS HEAD FOR THE treadmill when the snow flies. Too bad, says Matt Carpenter (shown at left), seven-time champion and course record holder of the Pikes Peak Marathon. "Spend the winter building your strength base in the snow, and come spring it feels easy," he says, touting his Rocky Balboa–style workout. "You feel like a deer." Snow running—more than snowshoeing and cross-country skiing—can greatly improve balance while building muscle and ligament strength. Because the depth and quality of the snow determines the level of resistance you'll encounter, run for time rather than distance. In deep, heavy snow—or worse, glazed New England granules that you alternately glide over and punch through—plan on running about 60 percent of your normal distance; in champagne powder, up the percentage to 80. If you use a heart-rate monitor, program it to signal 70 percent of your maximum workload. Without exceeding that target, run easy for five minutes to warm up, and then head out into the wind for the first half of your run (to avoid frostbite and hypothermia, Carpenter recommends you face the harshest cold while fresh and hydrated). Start out on the flats, if possible—running uphill can restrict blood flow and prevent your toes from warming up. Once you've determined where and how long you want to run, turn your attention to refining your technique: Your stride length will shorten to maintain balance, thereby causing your legs to tense up, so focus on relaxed breathing to stay limber. Develop a rounder stride, kicking your feet up high to clear snow. And stutter-step on sharp turns, around switchbacks, and when crossing roads where treacherous black ice may lurk.

tip sheet: be the fish The goal of water golf is to lower your par, which ain't easy. Merely swimming harder will lower your clock time but raise your stroke count, effectively making all your gains a wash. Practice tweaking your stroke as follows so that it delivers more. *Convert side-to-side movements to rotational movements, focusing on your spine as an axis. *Bring your arms into sync with your body's rotation, placing your hand in the water at goggle level as opposed to out front, and by kicking with less intensity. *Position your body as if going downhill: Look down, lean on your chest, and lift your hips.

Tracy Frankel/Image Bank

4. Mountain Biking
The dirty secrets of cyclocross

Jonathan McElvery

ALISON DUNLAP MAY be a star on the international mountain bike circuit, but the champion perfected some of her sport's more critical skills riding cyclocross—an off-road steeplechase that requires riders to dismount their bikes, throw them over their shoulders, and run through wintry muck. "I started because I thought it would be a great way to build technical skills during the off-season," says Dunlap (pictured below). She and her husband, cyclist Greg Frozley, ride a practice cyclocross course they set up at a park once a week in their hometown of Colorado Springs. Here's how to do the same: Find a fairly short, bikeable loop a mile or less in length, one that will take about seven to ten minutes per lap. Add three short detours on a hill or staircase, steep enough to make you get off your bike but short enough to run up in five to ten seconds. At the end of a dry, flat stretch, set up a trio of 16-inch-high hurdles eight feet apart. Add another set of three hurdles elsewhere on the course, anywhere from 15 to 25 feet apart. Dunlap uses sawhorses built from two-by-fours, but you can also use PVC or logs. Cyclo-cross is short and intense; your training sessions should fall somewhere between 45 minutes to an hour. Vary your early sessions by riding one loop hard and one easy, as you slowly build to a full hour of hard riding.   

Paul Scott is a frequent contributor to Bodywork.