Is there a rule of thumb how many days before a race at altitude you should go (coming from sea level) to get a good performance. Anything longer than a week is not doable for me though.
Is there a rule of thumb how many days before a race at altitude you should go (coming from sea level) to get a good performance. Anything longer than a week is not doable for me though.
unless you can take off a month.
Its better to just , go there only like 1 or 2 days before.
Go as close to the race as possible because it gives your body less time to start changes in your blood. My understanding of it was that during the changes performance takes a dive. Of course some of this is dependent on how your body responds and whether or not you've been at altitude for longer periods before. Coach Mann always claimed that you adjusted quicker if you had trained at altitude before but I don't know what his basis for this statement was.
If you really want a good answer you should contact the High Altitude Training Center at NAU.
Good luck
If you can afford a week then go a week ahead and run a fairly good training session the first day, then maybe day 4 a pretty good session and race on day 7. If you can't do this then just arrive the day of the race or evening before the race. Whatever you do, go out slower than you think is reasonable in the race itself. Depends on the altitude, but you will probably go about 20-seconds per mile slower than you would have done at sea level (when at a 7000 foot altitude; little less loss at 5000). If you go out too fast you will die a horrible death
As someone who's gone back and forth I say go as close to the race as possible. Don't give you're body time to get angry at you and wonder what the F is going on. Day before is excellent. Usually the day, and day after I get to altitude I run fine then the body takes a dive.
Don't listen to these guys. Don't lsiten to me either if you dont want to. You could become close to fully adapted to the altitude in about 3 weeks. If you don't have that kind of time - the more you're up here the better.
Thanks all. Is there a reason that going the day of is better than 2-3 days before (scientific?)?
2-3 days (sometimes even a full week) after getting to altitude, you'll feel like ass. You can't produce red blood cells quickly enough to adapt to the change, so your body will be laboring to do normal things, and you'll just feel really tired.
It does depend on the altitude and the person though. And I'd agree that if you've trained at a certain altitude before, especially if it was relatively recent, you may adapt more quickly but that's just from my own experience. Jack might know more about that. so would Chappy.
Worth reiterating.
jtupper wrote:
If you go out too fast you will die a horrible death
go as early as possible and take diamox (acetazolamide) for a couple days to speed acclimatization