New Altitude Race Conversion Calculator TrackCalculator.com

Albaro, the creator of the calculator, said he'd answer my questions here so here goes.

Albaro- this looks cool. Thanks for making it. I'm curious how your conversions compare to the official NCAA conversions for altitude?

#2 The only time I put in there was 3:57.33 for the mile to see what Nico Young's time converts to. It said 3:48.22. You think he could really go that fast? Clearly there is a range for different individuals right?

#3
And my only suggestions would be to have some preset cities as dropping downs. Or at least have sea level be as the default. (To do the Nico Young calculation above I put 7,000 feet in for Flagstaff which isn't the exact number and put in 1 foot to make it sea level as it woudn't accept 0 feet)

Great suggestion. I’m not sure how to solve the issue since there are a lot of different cities and elevations especially when you go worldwide. I can post the elevations of the US indoor tracks on here when I get home to at least give people the ability to play around with the calculator for now while I think on it. I can answer your questions when I get home and pull up my dissertation docs

One of the hypothesis of my study was that athletes living at higher elevations would have a different rate of change as they descended to sea level or ascended to higher elevations. Unfortunately we did not find significance as the sample size of highlanders who competed at sea level within the same indoor season in the same event was really small. We could try to redo the study in a few years once the TFRRS database is a little bigger. But for now whether you live at sea level or altitude the calculator gives the same conversion. I do think that in the future we will be able to prove that there is a lesser effect for those who live and train at altitude. All that to say that I think the Nico Young conversion is likely too generous

In general the biggest difference is trackcalculator's conversions are more generous at moderate elevations (like Albuquerque) about 1.5 seconds faster for a 4:00 mile for Men or 4:40 mile for Women than the current conversion equations. The biggest difference is that the 10k conversion is far too generous under the current conversion methods compared to trackcalculator's :

for a 14:00 5k at sea level would convert to a 14:40.86 at flagstaff whereas the current NCAA conversion equations put it at 14:47.62. So not too far off but for the 10k there is an enormous difference: 29:16 at sea level currently yields a 32:13 at flagstaff whereas trackcalculator's gives a 30:35.

In general the reasons for the differences are 1) the current NCAA conversion equations are curvilinear whereas we found a straight line fit the data the best so it gives a better conversion until you get to flagstaff then its pretty close. 2) All of the previous models are based on the assumption that the further the distance the greater the effect when in reality it is based on the %VO2max of the event (so RATE of oxygen consumption not VOLUME) so the effect of altitude is greatest at the 3k and then quickly starts to fade due to the physiological nature of how long an athlete can operate at their VO2max. After about 8-10 minutes you are no longer able to hold 100% of your VO2max; it drops to about 75% of VO2max for the Marathon so the effect of higher elevations also drop once you go beyond 3k

Also worth noting that this project was in service of the NCAA as they wanted to update their altitude conversion equations. I am not sure if and when these conversions will be set to a vote and replace the current ones but that was originally the purpose of the project

Another hypothesis is that since altitude mostly affects vo2 but running economy is also a main contributor to how fast someone can run a distance event. That those with different mixes of vo2 and running economy can have more or less benefit from dropping down in altitude.

When it comes to predicting the mile there is probably also some limit based on the potential top end speed an athlete is capable of running.

That’s a good point. I used to think of running economy as a marathon type of variable but after reading and summarizing 200+ articles for the literature review of this dissertation project it seems like it would be much more beneficial for high VO2max type of events. Training at altitude also tends to make mitochondria more efficient at extracting ATP from Oxygen due to more complex I and complex II activity, which likely is what contributes to the improvements in running economy I saw in those articles