The sun had yet to come up in Edmonton, Alberta, and it was more than 20 degrees below zero. Tanis Smith layered up anyway, ready to run up and down hundreds of stairs among the trees in the Saskatchewan River Valley.
When she arrived at 6 a.m., 10 other people joined her. It wouldn’t be the last time they risked freezing their toes off to get in a workout before the rest of the world wakes up.
“You’re pretty much just putting everything you own on,” said Smith, an accountant. “If you look at the pictures, you don’t know who you are unless you remember what you were wearing.”
Since that winter of 2013, Smith has rarely missed a workout with the group, called November Project, a network of free outdoor group exercise classes that started in Boston. No matter the month or weather, participants roll out of bed before dawn at least once a week and shield their faces from the blistering cold.
One part intense training and one part abject silliness, the project is a model for how to stay motivated to exercise outside throughout the winter.
It started when a pair of friends challenged each other to exercise every morning for the month of November. By the end of the month, they were recruiting others.
“A party is better when there’s more people around,” said Bojan Mandaric, who created the project with Brogan Graham in 2011. “We would talk to anybody who would listen.”
Soon, their meetings were attracting a few dozen people, who then brought the idea to other cities when they moved. Now there are 52 chapters in eight countries, including 44 in the United States and Canada.
Workouts, which attract all ages and fitness levels, begin with a “bounce,” a hopping, call-and-response chant to loosen people up physically and mentally. How the classes continue varies on the location and day of the week, but most include running and body weight exercises like squats or burpees.
To promote the idea that exercise can be fun, they also might weave in activities that would be at home during childhood recess in the schoolyard.
In Edmonton, they’ve played an intense version of duck duck goose, gone sledding in winter and done Slip ’n’ Slide in summer. One workout in Boston involved a kind of Easter egg hunt, where you search for plastic eggs at a sprint. Crack them open to find commands that could be, walk like a gorilla, do a cartwheel, or grab grass and dump it on Mandaric’s head.
The point is to lower inhibitions, which helps people make connections, said Jason Shaw, co-leader of the Indianapolis chapter.
“Nobody’s cool at November Project,” he said. “At different gyms, especially, you always have the people who just are so cool, or think they’re so cool. We try to nip that in the bud.”
Shaw said chapters mark different milestones, much like Scout merit badges, by spray painting a tag on your shirt for, say, showing up on your first single-digit day.
But they don’t spray when it’s too cold. The paint freezes.
If you don’t have a chapter nearby, many cities offer some kind of running or outdoor exercise group, though many are not free. Otherwise, November Project organizers offered a few suggestions on how to stay motived to keep working through the colder months.
Accountability is a core tenet of the project. Members make a verbal promise to show up, and there is almost a sense of letting down your teammates if you don’t, said Mandaric, who moved to Boston from Serbia to row crew for Northeastern University.
There’s no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing, Shaw said. At a minimum, buy a moisture-wicking base layer that will help keep you warm and dry. Avoid cotton, which keeps sweat in contact with your body and will make you colder. And add a top jacket with wind-breaking fabric.
Commit to exercising on the same days and times for a month. Creating a predictable routine will help you get into a groove that is easier to maintain, Mandaric said.
One of the things Smith appreciates most about the project is its social aspect. She called it “a chosen family” that was formed partly because they were having fun while exercising.
“Fitness doesn’t have to be this hard-nosed, drill-sergeant type thing,” she said. “You can have fun and get fit.”