am) I had to go in to the city this morning and leave the safety and comfort of the mountains. I get tense and stressed when I get down there. I left the house and it was 54 degrees by my thermometer and after running my errands it was about 80 starting my run. I've read everything I can find in regards to altitude training and I've come to several conclusions.
After 7 months of sleeping, eating, training and repeating at 8000+ ft, I have adapted quite well and don't feel that altitude conversion based purely on elevation is appropriate.
Big benefits I will gain from living where I do will come in the form of 2 things:
1) cooler temperatures. I saw HR's today that were similar to HR's I would see up here simply because I felt so damn hot. When I run in the mornings up here it is mid 50's and the evenings are mid 70's. Heat kills training more than anything else. Dehydration- as I've pointed out a gazillion times- is maybe the single biggest performance detractor. A high core temp causes blood to be shunted away from working muscles.
2) a training environment that allows me to escape in to a world of very low stress. I'm very happy up here and running is pure joy. In my old age I have grown sensitive to society and the interaction with others. I don't need to go in to a rant and sound like Allie Fox, but I am very happy running through the mountains with no people, no traffic, not even any pavement if I don't want it. We don't even have litter up here.
I do think however, that there is a conversion for the difference in terrain. Today on my run on the flat Coal Creek trail my 3rd mile was 5:54 with a HR max of 139. Running a steady mile at 5:54 felt elementary where running a 5:54 mile up here means you are hammering up a 5% grade at 6:20 pace then running 5:30 on the downs. Completely different! Heading in to these last 2 training blocks I need to really start focusing on driving to find flat roads. Even heading to Nederland to their track will help. As I said before I don't think I want to consider the altitude after 7 months so driving up to run flat would work. If I had even one mile of flat road up here I think I would run very close to the same paces I am hitting at lower and flatter elevations.
With that said- next week I will be at sea level and hope to do both a MAF test and an AeT test to see how my body reacts to a drop in over 8000 ft of elevation.
And on another note: This is the most boring Tour De France ever.. I thought it was going to be the greatest but I was wrong.
4 comments:
I find it odd that they only have one long individual time trial this year. Granted the prologue was a bit longer than normal, but still short.
The big mountain states are coming early next week though, should be fun to watch.
I think the ITT is where Lance will try to win. Lance holds Contador to less than a minute in the mountains... then wins the TT and wins the Tour and never looks like he is "competing" with Contador. He never has to attack him. What the hell do I know though. Sounds good.
Lance will have to deal with a Sastre/Contador attack at least. But I like your recipe for Lance success, Lucho.
I think Schleck,Evans,Sastre,Vandevelde are going to attack enough that just by responding
Lance and Alberto will have plenty of opportunity to hurt each other. But like Lance said the other day, the biggest tragedy would be if he and Alberto worried so much about themselves that neither of them won.
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