Write your cold and ice thresholds in November and send them to your athletic director. A threshold you wrote in advance is a rule. A threshold you invent at 6:15 on a cold Tuesday is an argument with a parent.
This is the one-page policy I use, on a single sheet you can put your own numbers into, print, and post.
What is on the page
- Four wind chill thresholds with the decision at each one, from practising outdoors as normal down to indoors regardless of temperature
- The call time and the communication plan. Who decides, by when, and through which channel, every time
- The wind chill caveat almost nobody publishes. The index models a person walking at three miles an hour and measures facial skin only. Your athletes are not walking, and it says nothing about their hands
- The winter checklist: doubling the warm-up, the dehydration nobody notices, cold air and airways, and why ice cancels workouts when cold does not
- Editable. The orange text is yours to change, so the numbers match your school rather than mine
Send it to your athletic director in November, before the first cold morning, and ask whether the school already has a policy you should align to. Finding that out in November is considerably better than finding it out in January.
Enter your email and it arrives in about a minute. You get both a print-ready PDF and an editable Word version, because the page asks you to put your own numbers in it.
One email with the files, then the occasional coaching note. Unsubscribe in one click, any time. No sharing your address with anyone, ever.
What happens next
- Check your inbox. The email arrives within a minute or two from Coach Jason Saltmarsh. If it is not there, look in Promotions or spam, and drag it to your main inbox so the next one lands properly.
- Open the PDF first. Read it, decide whether my thresholds are right for your program, then open the Word version and change the numbers that are not.
- Send it on. Athletic director, school nurse, athletic trainer. Three sentences: these are the thresholds I intend to use, they are more conservative than a general chart because runners generate their own wind, and does the school already have something I should align to instead.
Where this came from
The cold policy is one page of the Winter Kit, which is part of the winter training block: the twenty weeks between the last cross country race and the first outdoor meet, written out day by day for two paths and four levels.
- Winter training for high school distance runners. The full twenty weeks, free to read.
- How cold is too cold to run. The reasoning behind every threshold on the page, including the wind chill maths.
This is general coaching education, not medical advice. Cold weather policy should be confirmed with your athletic director, school nursing staff, and any applicable state association rules. An athlete with respiratory symptoms that do not settle after 20 minutes indoors, or with signs of frostbite or hypothermia, needs medical attention rather than a coaching decision.