Planning to go on an altitude camp next spring/summer. From Europe and wanna go training for a few weeks or a month. Sankt Moritz comes to mind, but it's too expensive (college kid). Any other ideas?
Planning to go on an altitude camp next spring/summer. From Europe and wanna go training for a few weeks or a month. Sankt Moritz comes to mind, but it's too expensive (college kid). Any other ideas?
Why altitude? Will you be competing?
Zakopane has a good track, lots of great runners (like Kszczot and Lewandowski) and it's relatively cheap. It's not that high up but you could stay at a hotel higher up on the mountains and at least do your runs, other than track workouts, up there.
Watch out for bears.
Alpe di Siusi in the Dolomites. It’s supposedly where the Kenyans train in June. There’s a big sign in the center of “town”( about 8 buildings) that has a map of all their trails and distances. The trails are all marked. Rolling packed dirt. It’s beautiful and serene.
Font Romeu, French Pyrénées.
Jaca, Spanish Pyrenees.
Soria, Spain. All the great Spanish distance guys of yesteryear trained here.
For cheap hotel prices - Erzurum, Turkey, near Iran border. Turkish National team training center. Altitude 1600-2000m + perfect. Great food, friendly people. Bus or flight from Istanbul.
Sorry if this answer is a little bit of track but I’m just opening up some possibilities away from the beaten track.
LIVIGNO, Italy
Jama Aden trained his group in Sabadel Spain. It's not great elevation, but if it is good enough for his athletes, it might work for you too.
Livigno is actually quite close geographically to St. Moritz, but is much cheaper since it's in Italy.
This is almost impossible, because of geographic reasons.
Mountain towns in the alps are 1600 meters max in altitude. St. Moritz with 1800 meters is already an exception. Above that there are some high altitude ski villages in France.
St Moritz and Font Romeu
lagatita wrote:
Alpe di Siusi in the Dolomites. It’s supposedly where the Kenyans train in June. There’s a big sign in the center of “town”( about 8 buildings) that has a map of all their trails and distances. The trails are all marked. Rolling packed dirt. It’s beautiful and serene.
Holy crap that place looks incredible.
Kvothe wrote:
lagatita wrote:
Alpe di Siusi in the Dolomites. It’s supposedly where the Kenyans train in June. There’s a big sign in the center of “town”( about 8 buildings) that has a map of all their trails and distances. The trails are all marked. Rolling packed dirt. It’s beautiful and serene.
Holy crap that place looks incredible.
Ohh, the Dolomites are fabulous. That's where I learned to hike.
King Tiger wrote:
Livigno is actually quite close geographically to St. Moritz, but is much cheaper since it's in Italy.
Totally agree. Been there twice. Now they even have a new brand running track
lagatita wrote:
Alpe di Siusi in the Dolomites. It’s supposedly where the Kenyans train in June. There’s a big sign in the center of “town”( about 8 buildings) that has a map of all their trails and distances. The trails are all marked. Rolling packed dirt. It’s beautiful and serene.
Been there as well. The problem is you need to based at 1100m and take a cable car up to 1800. There are two/three hotels on top but no amenities whatsoever. Also there is hardly any flat on top - small loop of some 5k which is not really flat at all. If one looks for a lot of elevation then is a great place to go. Paul Tergat used to go there a lot.
1K XC loop around Lake Lej Alv at 8,150 feet above St. Moritz. Transportation via funicular railway to the mountain top.
Post anonymously wrote:
Planning to go on an altitude camp next spring/summer. From Europe and wanna go training for a few weeks or a month. Sankt Moritz comes to mind, but it's too expensive (college kid). Any other ideas?
Thanks for starting this thread. Zakopane is charming but more expensive than say Copper Mountain. Copper is high up there. When you come down to sea level, you will be slower for the next couple of weeks so don't race right away. Bong fires, occasional summer snowboarding, open air concerts, fireworks, great pubs and cheap summer condos with great views. There is that trail that goes down to Silverthorn. No tracks.
I think all of EU has gone crazy with their pricing. I get financing economic growth off future taxes but you are not going to get any future taxes if you price out all the travelers. $2M for a mountain house in Zakopane is nuts!
Flagstaff is cheaper. Democrat or Republican in the WH, EU is way crazier. And Poland is less crazy than the rest of the EU right now.
The Erzurum suggestion, that is nice and cheap so that a runner can afford. I just hope the Turks stopped shooting their guns at the sky when celebrating or when expressing their displeasure with their dogs' behavior. Them spiteful bullets insist on coming back down. Looked it up, $3 for a dinner - that's runner's pricing.
COVID free training in NZ. Might take some time to get a visa and the plane ride is a bit long.
Back when I was young enough to altitude-train, the mantra from the physiologists was "sleep high train low". There were some people around Boulder who would sleep up at Magnolia Road (8000 feet) and come down to 5000 to train. And Igor Gamow, inventor of the Gamow Bag and professor at Boulder, who had athletes sleeping in a depressurised tube.
The ultimate Euro equivalent we dreamed up, but never actually executed, was out in Chamonix, sleeping at the Cosmiques hut (3600m / 10 000 feet), a "commute" involving a big snow arete and a cable car to the valley, and a rather annoying 300m track in town at 1050m altitude.
So surely the ideal is a nice high alpine resort, with a fast motorway down near sea level where you can train for a couple of hours a day.
Anyone here sleeping high and training low?
Surprised no one’s mentioned Lanzarote
It’s quite interesting that you mention Jaca. It’s not that high.
It depends what you are looking for, but travelling during summer to some ski resort at high altitude and running laps of the car parking, which will be empty during summer szn, will do the trick.
eurodonkey wrote:
The ultimate Euro equivalent we dreamed up, but never actually executed, was out in Chamonix, sleeping at the Cosmiques hut (3600m / 10 000 feet), a "commute" involving a big snow arete and a cable car to the valley, and a rather annoying 300m track in town at 1050m altitude.
Nice joke. The cable car costs a bomb, as does the mountain "hut". Also the cable car is often fully booked. Also Chamonix is packed with tourists (I had lunch there last week).
No mention of Sierra Nevada, Sestrières or that place in Bulgaria yet.