"The general effect [of altitude training] is no effect" Tim Noakes

Most of the best come from a small sub-group of people who live at altitude. Almost every other group of people living at altitude are NOT good runners.

ttc wrote:

Most of the best come from altitude. The stats back me up. What backs you up?

The stats say that come from a single tribe concentrated in one small area on the entire planet.

99.999999999999 percent of the people who live at the same altitude cannot run worth shite.

Put those stats in your pipe and smoke it.

Anyone who thinks training at altitude is not beneficial to Distance Runners is a fool.

malmo wrote:

JD has probably identified the reason most precisely. When you choose to move to some far-off location to train, your focus and commitment is probably going to be at a higher level. The low humidity and year round dry weather will probably reinforce the rightness of your decision. Camaraderie of others around you that have made the same commitment will likely reinforce, as well.

The same elements were at work when people were moving to Boston, Eugene, Gainesville and eventually DC. Only the weather was crap in those places.

Agree about the weather but genetics is quite likely to play some role in how each individual responds to altitude training. For example look at adaptations to extreme altitude in certain population groups.

While these won't necessarily help them run fast at sea level it does show that there is a strong genetic component to how one adapts to altitude.

You Mad Bro? wrote:

Anyone who thinks training at altitude is not beneficial to Distance Runners is a fool.

Count me in with Noakes and Daniels.

ttc wrote:

Most of the best come from altitude. The stats back me up. What backs you up?

You're being too simplistic. How many great runners come from the region of the Andes? the Himalayas? the Mexican highlands? the Gobi Desert?

When Sam Chelenga moved to the states was it at high altitude or low altitude? Did he become better, much better or worse?

in distance running Not all runners training at altitude are ranked number 1 in the world but I think it is safe to say that least 99% of distance runners ranked #1 have trained at high altitude.

Just like not all runners that do tempo runs are at the top of the elite group but everyone at the top of the elite group do tempo runs.

to say : "The general effect [of altitude training] is no effect"

is the same as saying:: "The general effect [of tempo runs] is no effect".

Couldn't farther away from the truth.

jjjjjjj wrote:

If the question is whether going to train at medium altitude (5-8k above sea level) is going to make me faster and the answer is that it does, what do I care about whether it is really the altitude or the climate or the lower stress? We're interested in effects, not pseudo-causal explanations.

Because understanding it leads to more effective methods. For example if it is a placebo effect (very possible) then I can think of cheaper and more convenient placebos :)

Running patrol wrote:

in distance running Not all runners training at altitude are ranked number 1 in the world but I think it is safe to say that least 99% of distance runners ranked #1 have trained at high altitude.

Just like not all runners that do tempo runs are at the top of the elite group but everyone at the top of the elite group do tempo runs.

The number of athletes ranked number 1 in the world in distance events is tiny. This is important because:

Your statistical pool is also biased by the fact that the best distance runners in the world come from a small sub-group of people in Kenya/Ethiopia.

We could just as easily say that it's not training at altitude, but training at altitude in East Africa that is important.

There is also, of course, clear evidence that tempo runs work. This is not the case for high altitude training.

Running on Empathy wrote:

ttc wrote:

Most of the best come from altitude. The stats back me up. What backs you up?

You're being too simplistic. How many great runners come from the region of the Andes? the Himalayas? the Mexican highlands? the Gobi Desert?

Good point but recent studies have shown that these people evolved and adapted to altitude differently than those from Africa.

ttc wrote:

I *know* what the author said. I'm drawing *further* questions from his content, and you're just redundantly replying with his cliff notes version. I also said most of the world's best come from altitude- not what you said. And that demands a clear reason by the author. If you stick with your original post, then don't bother replying. Hire a tutor first.

Runners from Altitude are more successful? Just because a large number of poor runners that live on high elevation are the top in the world gives no credit to altitude. Running to feed your village is a much bigger incentive than glory.

Lots of back and forth, but no studies or scientific evidence provided.

So lets say you do a tempo at 5:20/mile up at 8000 feet. If you go down to sea level and run 5:20/mile for the same amount of time will it be-

A.)easier?

b.)harder?

c.)the same?

If you chose answer B or C you are an idiot. If you are running up at altitude there is less oxygen in the air. There is MORE oxygen in the air at sea level. Come on people this is easy stuff don't be mad just because you never got to train at altitude.

OH yeah, the answer is A by the way.

The Aussies are looking at the psych benefits. As Noakes notes, it works for some and not others. For the ones it does not work for the questions can be

1) did they go high enough

2) what about iron status

3) what about nutrition

4) was their training proper to allow for altitude--easy to do too much too fast or too much because you are excited to be there

5) if it is a group training, does that affect it (I hypothesize that group training has a benefit).

the correlation does not equal causation (or post hoc, ergo propter hoc) claim is overused. Correlation is a fantastic guide to finding out causal relations, knowing what to test. You need some sense in doing it. You don't say that tea must be the explanation, because that doesn't exclude other nations that do poorly at running. Altitude is a big advantage, but you have to have a culture in which training hard is common to become a great distance running nation. Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Tibet, Nepal, and Bhutan, among other high altitude nations, do not have running cultures at all. I have spent time in a number of those countries and talked to others about the remaining and you just do not find many people running in them. When I was in Potosi, Bolivia at 13,000 feet, I was literally the only runner (non-soccer player) in the city. Now the superhigh altitude makes it very hard to train and not used to it in my six weeks there I could run only a couple miles a day (on the dirt track at the soccer stadium, it was impossible to run on the broken cobblestones of the city and you couldn't easily leave the city because of all the loose and stray dogs in the shanty towns on the outside of the city). Yet, I still improved considerably by being there and running down in Sucre for a few days at 8000 ft was very easy and much, much faster, and then back in California at sea level, it was incredibly easy at first. I also improved a lot in five months in Albuquerque in 2008, but then I did actually continue to get faster living at sea level later.

the number of athletes ranked number 1 in the world in any event is tiny. This has nothing to do with statistical pool.It has everything to do with the common denominator of the top of the tops at the elite level. even the

Azaleas wrote:

We could just as easily say that it's not training at altitude, but training at altitude in East Africa that is important.

Incorrect, we have seen similar results (#1 rankings) from other athletes training at high altitude in Europe and the US as well. Including white females.

As far as no evidence for high altitude training success, I would say proof may not be scientifically explained yet but again the results speaks from themselves.

That being said, the point is not to say that Altitude training is the magic ingredient.....It is not!!

Altitude training is just one of the ingredients (and not even the most important ingredients I might add) but one that is very tricky to incorporate correctly if not experienced on a regular basis like being born and/or living at high altitude for most of your training life.

No one can deny that if you can do at high altitude what others can only do at sea level then you will dominate them at sea level competition 99% of the time.

But you still need to do the basic hard training stuff.

That's the benefits of high altitude training, making it harder to train hard without really having to change anything in your regular training other than getting used to getting used to it. Easier said than done and again much easier if you've lived all your life there.

And had ancestors who lived there too. Check out that link I posted above. Talks about genetic adaptations that let people sleep better at altitude. That alone can make a huge difference in how much hard training you can handle.

I train in a "low" altitude city 600-700 meters. I have normally only 1-2 days to get used to these sea level races on weekends. Every race I do at sea level, I'm consistently 1min slower and sweating excessively, blowing up, etc. Its like my body cannot adjust to fuller oxygen.

Can somebody explain to me if I'm supposed to run faster or not faster. I'm so confused over this? Please help!