I’m in Snowmass for my pre-Ironman high altitude training camp. This concept, going somewhere with low oxygen content to train for an athletic event, has fallen somewhat out of favor as exercise physiologists have studied it more carefully.
The original idea was, people who live at high altitudes have developed compensatory mechanisms for the reduced oxygen tension in the air. For those old enough to have driven a car without electronic fuel injection into the mountains, the idea should be easy to comprehend. As we drove those cars up, up, up into the mountains, to the high passes over the Rockies, we noticed the car would become sluggish, would not accelerate as it did in the flatlands. Quite simply, there was less oxygen in the air/fuel mixture. Less air, less fuel can be ignited with each spark, and as a result, each piston thrust had less power. The exact same thing happens to us. Up here, we have less oxygen available, and so our muscles are literally starved of that air/fuel mixture, leading to the heavy breathing we experience with something as simple as walking upstairs. We’re trying to get MORE OXYGEN into our system, to compensate just as the modern electronic fuel injector does in your car.
Since oxygen is carried through the blood stream to the places it is needed (basically , everywhere!), our bodies compensate by creating MORE red blood cells, so we can carry MORE oxygen. Think if it like this: if each RBC is able to carry four O2 molecules at sea level, it can carry only 2 or 3 up here. By increasing the number of RBCs in the blood, each given volume will have closer to the sea level amount of O2 in it. So those who live at high altitude have higher hematocrits (% age of blood volume taken up by RBCs).
Go to sea level with that higher crit, and you can provide EXTRA O2 to the working muscles and other organs. Back in the 60s, especially after the first high altitude East African, the Ethiopian Abibe Bikila, won the marathon, coaches and athletes started to train at higher elevations, to mimic his success.
Over the intervening years, we’ve learned a few things about this. First, it takes 3 weeks or more for the full effect of a higher hematocrit to appear. Second, this effect will start to disappear in about 6 weeks (the half life of an RBC). Third, the low O2 content at elevation inhibits the ability to do strenuous physical activity, no matter how fit one is. So attempts at swimming, biking, or running short, intense intervals result in a much slower, harder effort, and produce less training effect than the same amount of perceived effort at sea level. Fourth, the main benefit is obtained not by actually TRAINING at elevation, but simply by LIVING there.
Thus, the maxim, “Live high, train low”. Meaning, sleep as high as you can, and do your training at a lower elevation if possible. And, don’t try to do intense, “anaerobic” intervals anywhere above, say, 3-4000 feet in elevation.
I think there are still some physiologic facts to be found about high altitude training and living. For instance, I think there are other compensations besides hematocrit which occur. Changes in our endocrine system, in our liver enzymes, in our sweat mechanisms, water distribution, and kidney function may also appear, but these have not yet been extensively studied. We do know that adrenaline increases, muscle capillaries increase, muscle mitochondria increase, reliance on carbohydrates for muscle contraction increases, and weight decreases with long-term exposure to low oxygen air. All of these would be good things for an endurance athlete, along with the higher hematocrit.
The trick is to be able to keep training at a level needed to maintain or increase fitness, while relying on the lower O2 to produce the physiologic compensations. In terms of Ironman training, the time from about 6 weeks before to 3 weeks before the race seems ideal. Not only would the elevated RBC level remain high at the time of the race, but the training program no longer has any intense intervals; almost all the work is done at race effort level, plus or minus about 5%. And that extra three weeks back at sea level before the event provides time for the changes to build into the body, with the benefit of higher O2. (During the first two of those three weeks before the event, I use another O2 based training secret which I might share with you when I do it.)
All right, so what do I specifically do here? I live at 8400 foot elevation, where the O2 content is about 30-35% lower than at sea level. So I’m getting a lot of stress to my system. I can drive about 20 minutes to a nice little spot at about 6700’ to do my “higher” intensity (now, between Ironman and Half Ironman race intensity) bike and run workouts along the Rio Grande Trail. I have a lot of mountain roads between 7000 and 12000 feet I can bike up and down. And I have a pool and a gym 500’ downhill, 2 miles away, I can bike to and get some swimming in. But I really can’t do hard, anaerobic level swim workouts at 7900’; just swimming at “Ironman Pace” is exhausting enough.
I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, and while my times in the race have gotten a bit better, what is really different is that the racing FEELS easier, and I certainly have much more energy available during the last half of the run, where most people are shuffling or walking. I don’t know if there is a connection between this high altitude training camp and my performance, but even if there isn’t, it is so peaceful, beautiful and calming here that I would come anyway.
I would, that is, if the weather were nice. In the five days I’ve been here, I’ve seen the sun, total, for less than a couple of hours. Up in the mountains, where I might like to go biking it is raining with a lot of regularity. In the “lower” valleys, each afternoon has seen some rain, at unpredictable times and locations. In other words, it is perfect weather for skiing, if only the temperature were 20F lower, and this were snow instead of rain. In the winter, this is the weather I love, and why I started coming here to begin with. But now, the sub-tropical plume of moisture which seems entrained from the Gulf (whether of Mexico or California, I can’t really say) is providing another layer of complexity to my training. I have to figure out just how reliable the forecast guys at NOAA are, and what the Doppler radar really means, to judge where I should go and what I should do.
Rain during a swim workout is kinda fun, especially when the sun pops out in the middle for a rainbow, and the drops are scattered enough to make individual little ripple plops, which I view from UNDERNEATH the surface. Light rain when running hard is not so bad, unless I’m not dressed for it. But biking for hours and hours in the rain is just not cool – it can be downright cold, as well as soaking.
Last year, for my longest ride before IM Coeur d’Alene, I rode for 100 miles, over 6 + hours, half of it it a Puget Sound spring shower. It got so bad, that I took a break in the middle, and wrung out my soaks, and shirt. It only made me mad, so I biked all the harder, and when I got to Coeur d’Alene, I knew I’d faced something tougher than anything the race could offer.
This year, I did my epic ride on the Rio Grande/Glenwood Canyon Trails. As I hit the river confluence on my return trip down the canyon, the rain began, and kept me company all the way past Carbondale – about an hour so so. As usual, the worst things were: totally wet and wrinkly feet; and freezing arms, which bear the brunt of the wind when in the aero position. This was about 2.5 – 35 hours into the ride, and I despaired of making the full 6.5 hours/110 miles I’d planned. Five miles before my car, where I would have a chance to quit, the deluge stopped. The sun did not come out, but I got enough courage to head onward upriver towards Aspen.
Along the way, I passed pair after pair of tandem riders, going SLOOOW up McLain Flats Road (a misnomer if there ever was one). A gritty climb for the uphill challenge that tandem riding provides. Passing them one by one up the hill kept me occupied long enough to not even notice the drudgery. I quickly got to Stein Park, at the edge of Aspen proper, where boatloads (literally) of river rafters were coming out of the Roaring Fork, having floated down from East Aspen through the center of town. I rode back the way they’d come, through the cottonwood groves to the Art Museum, and then up Puppy Smith Drive (what a great name for a street!) past the Hotel Jerome, by the Wheeler Opera House, than out of town via the Hopkins Street ped/bike way (Basically, the street is turned into a traffic free zone once winter ends.)
Out of town through the Marolt Open Space, under the highway, and then by the Golf Course and Truscott Place (yes, it is a relation) to the airport and back down River Road to my car. Whew! Zooming downhill next to the rural river at 22-28 mph at the end of a 108 mile ride, and not feeling tired or sore, having survived the rain, and I know I’m getting closer to that tension free zone of race readiness.
A six mile run tacked onto the end of that could bring me back to earth. Sweating, mentally drained, partially dehydrated, it can be a death march. But this time, I’d nailed the food and water intake during the day, and having a firm fine-rocked gravel trail through the woods on a gentle cliff above the river helps me end the day successfully. If only I could see the mountains, or, barring that, at least ski on them.