frozen lungs. good to know if training outside

from the conversation the other day on training in the cold vs training indoors: (http://www.runnersworld.com/article/0,7120,s6-238-267-269-7442-0,00.html)

The human body is adapted, after surviving five major ice ages, to heat air quickly as it passes through the nose and mouth. In fact, the one legitimate lung condition that troubles runners in cold air doesn't come from the cold. In his 10 years of working with Nordic skiers at the U.S. Olympic Committee training facility in Lake Placid, New York, exercise physiologist Ken Rundell, Ph.D., found that as many as 50 percent would develop "skier's hack"--a transient cough--during or after training.

In subsequent research at Marywood University in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Rundell proved that the dryness of cold air causes the "airway narrowing," a term he prefers to the more common "exercise-induced asthma." To diminish this problem, Rundell suggests using a scarf that will trap your natural water vapor when you exhale, and then allow you to "recycle" it when you inhale.

I have just about given up on my quest when I receive an e-mail from one of Steve Bainbridge's running partners in Fairbanks. Owen Hanley, M.D., is a pulmonary specialist, so he knows lungs, and he has seen the frozen variety. "It's easy to develop frozen lungs," Hanley says. "You simply have to die in the icy outdoors, and then your lungs will freeze along with the rest of you."

So, it is possible for your lungs to freeze. Only not while you're alive and running.

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