I had never once run at altitude before this summer, but I’ve been training in Gunnison and Crested Butte at 7700 feet and higher for all of June and July. My scenario might be different than yours, because I was relatively out of shape coming up here after a rough spring of hip and achilles issues. Because of that, it’s tough to tell if my difficulty was from being out of shape or the altitude or both.
Anyways, it seemed to only take a few days for me to feel pretty used to running on flat areas. My breathing had to be a lot deeper on the first few days. Hills are a different ballgame though. Starting out, any gradual incline would get me working, and I feel like that is finally starting to subside after about 6 weeks here. Hitting even the slightest gradual hills in the last miles of a 16+ mile long run has been really tough. The hills are still way tougher than back at sea level, but I finally feel strong on them instead of surviving. I guess the tip here is to be pretty aware of the elevation change on the routes that you’re going on.
Another difference is that I seem to start almost every run super slow no matter how I feel, around 7:40-8:00. Being above 7:00 pace when I’m back home and fit was pretty rare, but that could just also be a factor of the bigger mileage that I’m hitting here.
As far as workouts go, so far I’ve done lots of moderate paced stuff, some in long runs, a LT repeat session on the track of 6x1600 with 1:00 rest, a 6 mile LT run, some mountain runs, and a light speed workout of 8x200 with 2:00 rest at mile pace. Everything has felt pretty similar to what I do back home. I have just tried to emulate the effort that I would do back home for everything and it’s turned out well. For the 200’s, the goal was to run at mile pace just like I would back home, and I could feel a little difference in a workout like that. I think it’s important to maintain speed on stuff like that and hill sprints since generally everything else will be slower, so I’d just increase the rest on fast stuff like that. I’ll probably increase my rest to 2:30-3:00 next time I do the 200’s. It still wasn’t very difficult with 2:00, but the objective isn’t to be difficult, and I think a little longer rest for that will be better for me. I haven’t really done any 3k-10k effort stuff, and maybe not even half marathon stuff, so I’m no help on that. So far after my difficult long runs, I’ve felt them more 2 days after than the next day. I also didn’t do anything faster than moderate paced stuff until my 4th week here I think. Everything has felt like a pretty smooth transition.
I’ve also had no trouble adjusting to high mileage up here. As I said, it was a pretty rough spring for me, but I think my first full three weeks here were 55, 82, and 102. Wasn’t really the smartest build for me, but it worked out this time. I’ve been running on a lot of dirt. Naps and good nutrition/hydration have helped. I’ve been drinking a Gatorade every day after my main session and trying to drink 4 32oz bottles of water throughout the day as well.
I guess what I’m saying is just don’t be afraid to train hard as long as you go by effort for most things and have enough time to do a great job with all the little things, rolling, mobilizing, stretching, strength training, sleeping, hydrating and eating shortly after training. Of course, all of this could be said for training at sea level too. Good luck - it’s fun training up here.