Meet the workout group that gets people exercising outdoors, even in the dead of winter

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.