Did a mile today at 7000 feet please convert

rjm33 wrote:

Bingo!

Did he run the tangents and get a bad start with poor pacers as well?

This is really good news.

I am now the 'real' world record holder in the 'real' mile (This means I am the 'real' non-metric miler world record holder!!!) !!!

Oh yea.

Go run a mile at race effort at 7000 feet and repost all your snarky sh!t between bouts of barfing your organs out.

From what I've observed without the benefit of a science lab, it appears that altitude training (actually high elevation training)helps the runner at high elevation, but when they go to low elevation there is no apparent superman boost in performance. In fact one could argue the performances actually drop a little - I know a guy who was a swimmer with my son as kids and this guy switched to running - fast foward and this guy runs 3:59 for the mile and 1:03 for the HM and qualifies for the 2016 US Olympic marathon trials with his HM qualifier. He then trains for like over a year in Alamosa CO and is super altitude trained - at the Olympic trials he was in pack #2 for about 10 miles then started slowing down - he was very capable on paper of 2:13 but ended up finishing in a time about what Shalane and Amy ran. Not a bad time even for a guy, but way way below what he should have run. The course was at sea level in downtown Los Angeles so one would think all this rush of O2 with high levels of red blood cells from altitude training would translate into a 2:12/2:13/2:14 (remember the guy's a 3:59 miler!) but it didn't.

Those claiming altitude conversions are bogus have never run a mile at altitude. Fastest I ever ran in the 1500 at 5000' altitude was 4:01, but my one race at sea level was 3:55. I never broke 10 in the steeple at 5000' altitude, but my one race at sea level was 9:20. I ran with 5 other guys that that were D1 All Americans in the 1500, mile or 5000, and only 1 of them ever ran a qualifying mark at altitude off of a conversion, the others all ran their qualifying marks at low altitude.

Oh they're no doubt real - the higher you go the slower the time - the debate seems to be by how much - that's why I stress density altitude because an elevation only parameter is not telling the whole story - and the other debate is if a runner trains at high elevation are they going to blow everyone away at sea level? I say no - many runners living at high elevation they go to sea level and although they run decently, they don't become superman - BUT I MUST SAY your 3000 steeple example may be an exception to the rule - to go from the 10's to 9:20 is pretty awesome so congrats on that and your 3:55 is pretty darn good too - you should be proud of them - I hope you're still competing - 3:55 in college you should still have plenty of upside potential!

Slower pace == more aerobic== more effect of altitude and pO2 == steeple is affected more than one might expect based on distance alone