winter weather and running

Question
Daniel - now that winter has arrived in the northeastern US there are going to be snow days when running outdoors is difficult. I have a treadmill and a cross country skier but I am not a big fan of running indoors. When it snows is 30-60 minutes of snow shoveling anywhere equivalent to a 26 minute 5k run in fitness/calorie burn?

Answer
Hey Len, you will be burning more calories compared to snow shovelling. This is due to the fact that running at that pace is a higher intensity. 5k in 26 min is roughly 750 kcals/hour and shoveling is about 400kcals/hour.

Just remember this is just an average estimate. The more intense the activity is, the more you will be burning. If you do interval training with your treadmill runs you can also increase the caloric expenditure compared to long single set pace running.

Hope this helps