Truth Bomber wrote:
You're going to spend 1.5 hours in a car to run at elevation for almost no benefit when you could use that time to be actually running.....
Exactly. I've seen many people do this sort of thing, and I believe that it is almost always a waste of time. If you have a real job, and you're doing serious training, then time is a scarce resource. In general, you should be trying to cut down on the temporal overhead associated with running, not adding to it.
The main difference between doing a session at 400 feet and doing that same session at 5,000 feet is that, at the higher altitude, you'll reach the same lactate levels at a slower pace. It can be debated whether doing that once a week provides a net benefit or a net detriment, but any physiological benefit is extremely slight. If it costs ninety minutes of driving, I'd rather get in an extra thirty minutes of running at the lower altitude and pocket the saved hour for other things.