With all the talk about the cold weather, I was thinking, does working out when it is freakin wickedly cold (like today and yesterday) give you a mental edge over your competiton? I mean anyone can get up and train at 6am when it is nice out, but go for a 6am run in the frigid cold or get up and walk down to the pool (25 minutes away) to see what you are made out of. Could this be a significant mental edge us northerners have?
Just a thought. I am sure it has been brought forth before.
M~
A couple of years ago, before I returned to triathlon, I rode my bike rain or shine. It got to the point where I didn’t care a whit if it was raining. I’m sure this was an advantage.
When I head out for a run at 6 am and it is -30 outside I wonder how those guys in Arizona can do anything in the summer. In winter, we can put on layers and keep warm. When it is +110 how can you dress for it?
Maybe it’s the southerners that have the mental edge?
I would agree to a certain extent with that. Although, personally, I LOVE racing and biking and running in the rain. I race better when it is raining.
I still think it is much more taxing on the mind to do it in the freezing cold.
Although I think people who do that have mental toughness I don’t think that those who don’t do it lack mental toughness necessarily. For me, it is about choice and I don’t understand why anyone would want to ride outside when it is 10 degrees. I could do it but just think it is silly. I would say suffering through rides on a trainer or runs on a treadmill require the same mental toughness
That’s true as well. I never thought about the extremes in the other direction.
Maybe it is just my severe disdain for the cold.
hahaha…10 degrees!!! I would kill for 10 degree weather. Oh…unless you mean 10F instead of 10C.
yeah F, sorry 
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Considering that even in northern climes all our events are in the heat of the summer, that should give an edge to the warm weather people.
If they added x-country skiing or speed skating to the swim, bike and run then it would be a different story.
The significant mental advantage us northerners have is the concept of the “snow day.” This is a gift that those poor souls who live in warmer climes will never experience and we northerners need to take advantage of it. Our warm weather friends miss training days because of weather just like we do but mentally they will not be recalling the absolute pure joy of waking up and finding out school has been canceled. For them it is just a missed day of training, a downer rather than an uplifting experience. We come back refreshed and joyful. They are dispondent about missing a training day.
Return to the joy of your youth and embrace the “snow day” when it presents it self.
I think any kind of working on it outside the norm is always going to help physically as well as providing a mental edge. I love hills and temperature extremes. That way when I get hit with either…no big.
I think its more important to get the workout in when others find excuses not to train - thats the mental edge. Whether you end up working out on the treadmill/trainer or road is not as critical.
Another poster was right mentioning heat as an equally tough extreme for some people - I think that depends a lot on where you grew up and what you’re used to.
I think its good to train at least a few times in the extreme conditions so you know how it feels and how to deal with it in a way that works for you. Otherwise no point in exposing yourself every day to prove your own toughness - leave that for race day. No harm if you actually like going out in the cold/heat or are training for an event you know is going to have those conditions.
I ran the other day at 4:30AM and the temp was negative F with windchill (-12, I believe). I don’t see how waking up at 4:30AM, running by yourself, and running in the bitter cold … not be a competitive advantage? Even if it’s competing with yourself. IMO, it preapres you to handle almost any setback on race day. Is there anything that could happen on race day that would convince you to quit after you ran (and rode) in below-freezing temperatures before the sun came up? How could you rationalize that with yourself?
For anyone really serious about performance in triathlon I don’t think cold weather training offers any edge at all. Before I started going to NZ to escape the cold I went through quite a few Swedish winters doing my regular training schedule(all biking outdoors). Except for frost bites all it did for me was adapting me to perform really well in cold conditions. Not very useful since we are not gonna come close to those temps in our sport unless we are talking about winter triathlon. Specificity in training is pretty important when it comes to performing well in certain conditions I guess.
Bjorn,
Can’t you let a cold-weather guy have a false sense of confidence? =)
Can’t I pretend that an early morning cold-weather run builds toughness that benefits my training?
Well, I was just trying to convince myself I really need all those trips to the southern hemisphere 
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I look at it this way, there may be people getting up at 4 a.m, training in freezing cold rain etc, getting a mental edge. But I will take the quality of a workout in better conditions, at times of the day where my hormones are into it any day. I need the physical edge at this point, not mental. When I trained in extreme conditions it killed my motivation after a couple of years of it.
Mental edge is when my standard Sat. long brick is well over 110* heat index, going through 3 and 4 water bottles per hour and still being dehydrated. You finish that 65 mile ride and then are contemplating the run …
You really appreciate it when you travel up to Illinois for a late June 1/2 IM and the “wimps” from up north come down for the race. The temperature gets up into the low 90’s during the run and people are dropping like flies.
I’ll tell you about cold, the other night it dropped down to the 40’s! Even during the day it didn’t quite reach 70*. Now that is cold! Thankfully we’ve returned to saner temperatures, a low in the 50’s with highs in the upper 70’s. I’m going to be ticked if I have to carry the fruit trees into the garage this year. We’ve still got oranges and lemons on the trees.
Personally I think the benefits of working out in the cold haven’t been examined as much as they should. Bjorn is obviously a world class athlete who trained in the cold. So is Simon Whitfield and Peter Reid and countless other Canadians who really seem to excel. I dunno, maybe I am just trying to make myself feel better for living here in the cold. Personally I would rather work out in 110F than 5F.
Thanks for the responses!
Mark
Yeah, I’d trade ALL of the “advantages” for training in the cold of North Central Illinois for “Arizona” (or some other warm, dry place) in an instant.