Transitioning From Skiing to Running for Mountain Athletes

As mountain endurance athletes, we love to follow the seasons.  When the trails are dry, we run, hike, and scramble our way around the mountains. And when the snow falls, we enjoy skiing on that same terrain.  While transitioning our sports with the seasons can beneficially impact our long-term physical and mental health, it’s important to be judicious in those transitions to avoid injury. This is perhaps most relevant in the spring transition to running when our wealthy hearts and lungs can easily write a check that our impact-poor tendons, bones, and muscles might not be ready to cash.

So, what is the best way to transition from skiing to running? I’d say just to be patient, but we both know that’s not a defining characteristic of most endurance athletes.  So then what?  Let’s try a couple of tactics that can help set you up for a quicker, safer, and less injury-prone transition into those spring miles.

Run during ski season

Your transition into running will be much smoother if you don’t completely abandon running for five months straight. While skiing can remain the priority, running even once or twice a week for 30 minutes can help keep the body attuned to the running stimulus, making for a faster and less painful transition in the spring.  Maybe this means getting in a short run instead of a recovery ski, switching directly from ski boots into running shoes, and adding 30 minutes of running at the end of your ski day.

Set realistic spring running goals

Check-in on your goals.  If all you want to do is ski 100% until April, great!  But if you have early season running goals, you better have your “why” ready for inspection when you have a run planned and it’s a powder day, or the skies are blue and the corduroy fast.  Getting really clear with your goal and why you set it will help when it’s time to put in the work.  When faced with a tough training decision, I like to check in on my goals and ask if the training I plan to do is in service of those goals. If the answer is yes, it’s easy to commit to the session. And if the answer is no, it is worth reconsidering.

If training for a spring running race, to avoid injury, try to run at least the mileage of the race (as a bare minimum) during a week of training in the build-up. That means if you are working up to a 50K, you are hopefully running at least 30 miles a week (in addition to your skiing) in your build-up.

Make it count

If you only run once or twice a week, make it count biomechanically. One way to do this is by adding strides into your runs.  Doing 6-8 strides of 15-30 seconds at a 5K pace is a great way to remind your body what it means to run fast and strong.  Be sure to allow for a good warm-up and complete recovery of 2-3 minutes of easy running between each rep. Again, you aren’t looking for aerobic adaptations with this, but neuromuscular ones, so rest is vital.

Incorporate Gym ME for eccentric loading

As a mountain athlete, you know how important strength training can be to set you up nicely for your objectives.  Incorporating a cycle of gym-based muscular endurance work is a great way to build local muscular endurance and durability and accustom your legs to repetitive eccentric loading.  Not only can this be used to get flatlanders ready for mountain pursuits, but it’s also effective for skiers transitioning to running and needing to load their muscles and tendons in a controlled and progressive way.  Learn about ME in this deep-dive article https://evokeendurance.com/muscular-endurance-all-you-need-to-know/.

Because your legs have lost much of their impact conditioning (eccentric contractions) over the winter, try to spend some extra time on recovery.  Stretching, foam or ball rolling, massage, etc., will speed recovery between runs.

Follow the plan, not your heart, but listen to your body

Finally, hold yourself accountable to a plan. As trail conditions improve and social opportunities to run increase, it’ll be up to you to focus on not overdoing it.   A week of great running followed by six weeks of nagging injury is not in service of your goals. While everything we have discussed so far will help flatten the transition curve to running, it will still take time for your body to adapt to higher and higher loads.  Tendons especially can be slow to adapt, so setting and following a progressive plan is a great way to stay on the right side of injury. If all is going well, increase the frequency of running no sooner than every two weeks.  If you run twice a week now, ramp up to three times a week or two before jumping up again. Increasing the frequency progressively over 4-6 weeks and slowly replacing ski volume with running volume sets you up for success.