1200 feet in altitude - will it affect a 800/mile race?

No.

shootpost wrote:

No.

Thanks

I think 3000ish you'll see a difference if you don't train at altitude. 1200 feet is fine.

Technically you will see a difference. The air density (amount of oxygen you get per breath) decreases the entire time from sea level up to when you are in outer space. There's not some magic number where it suddenly decreases. At 1200 feet you'll run slower per mile than sea level, but we're talking less than a second difference, but more than a half second. It depends on how fast you're running as well.

Devil's Advocate wrote:

Technically you will see a difference. The air density (amount of oxygen you get per breath) decreases the entire time from sea level up to when you are in outer space. There's not some magic number where it suddenly decreases. At 1200 feet you'll run slower per mile than sea level, but we're talking less than a second difference, but more than a half second. It depends on how fast you're running as well.

Okay, thank you for this. I can live with one second slower.

Devil's Advocate wrote:

Technically you will see a difference. The air density (amount of oxygen you get per breath) decreases the entire time from sea level up to when you are in outer space. There's not some magic number where it suddenly decreases. At 1200 feet you'll run slower per mile than sea level, but we're talking less than a second difference, but more than a half second. It depends on how fast you're running as well.

1200 feet is not going to make a full second difference in a 800m time.

Devil's Advocate wrote:

Technically you will see a difference. The air density (amount of oxygen you get per breath) decreases the entire time from sea level up to when you are in outer space. There's not some magic number where it suddenly decreases. At 1200 feet you'll run slower per mile than sea level, but we're talking less than a second difference, but more than a half second. It depends on how fast you're running as well.

Obviously the density of oxygen decreases as you gain altitude; basic science. But that doesn't mean you'll inherently run slower at 1000' or even 3000'.

The difference for 800m at 1200' is nearly inconsequential. Using the NCAA conversions for 800m, we can infer a potential 1/10th of a second difference:

.31 sec for 3124'

.42 sec for 4009'

.65 sec for 5081'

1.27sec for 6981'

Here is a breakdown of effective Oxygen percentage for elevations. While the difference from sea level to 1000' has the largest change, the effective percentage is still high enough for the body to manage without noticeable performance differences:

Sea Lv 20.9%

1,000 20.1%

2,000 19.4%

3,000 18.6%

4,000 17.9%

5,000 17.3%

6,000 16.6%

7,000 16%

8,000 15.4%

9,000 14.8%

10,000 14.3%

hard to quantify if there was a difference or not for me, but lausanne, switzerland is around 1600' yet still produces fast times in distance races--1:42 for rudisha, sub-3:50 mile, sub-13 5ks...

So, less air pressure, less wind resistance. So it's faster at 1200 feet in an 800, not slower?

Or almost exactly the same?

Mr Smartypants wrote:

So, less air pressure, less wind resistance. So it's faster at 1200 feet in an 800, not slower?

Or almost exactly the same?

400 to 800 is the transition range where it probably depends on the individual athlete. Some may run a little faster at altitude, some a little slower. It depends on the type of athlete. For the majority of elite 800m runners, I would expect them to be a tiny bit slower on 800m at altitude. At 1200 feet, it probably will be not detectable, having a good race versus a bad race will be a far greater signal at that altitude.

For 400, I would expect most elite athletes to be a little faster at altitude compared to sea level, with slower athletes being potentially slower at altitude, since they'll be more aerobic in the 400m than elite runners. Of course, at really extreme altitudes, sprinters will be slower as well. But nobody runs track races at that kind of altitude, we're talking well past 10,000 ft, where just walking becomes noticeably harder.

Mr Smartypants wrote:

So, less air pressure, less wind resistance. So it's faster at 1200 feet in an 800, not slower?

Or almost exactly the same?

Couldn't tell ya, Columbo. You'd need a pretty controlled study to prove either way. But I would wager the difference at 800m would still be very negligible on any atmospheric factors.

You'd be equally as enthralled to worry about spike length, start line position assignment or reaction time as an implication to the 1/10th of a second in question.

Thanks for posting. I downloaded and saved the doc for future reference.