So they can blame their high hematocrit on the altitude. Lol

In seriousness, when the difference between 1st and 20th or being on a world tour team or not is 1%, and someone is paying for the training, you will find any marginal gain, be it proven to work or not.

I'm not sure what you mean by "obsessed" and "constant talk." That seems to a little bit of a theatrical description. Sure, a lot of World Tour teams run camps in Tenerife, etc. Though Tenerife has the benefit of both sea level and altitude training (sleep low, train high, etc.) I'd guess some of it is copy-catism over more recent practices rather than long-held tradition. When Team Sky dominated the TdF for so long, teams started copying their techniques. Just like lots of teams do long cool-downs after races even though there's no clear, proven benefit to cooling down (afaik). It's hard to pick out which practices are the really important ones, and which ones are window dressing. Particularly when chasing the last 1%.

Altitude training works. And it's the perfect place to train without distractions. On top of the Teide in Tenerife there's only one hotel, nothing else. They can focus on training and resting. No temptations to spend their down time walking around in the city or drinking in bars.

I thought it was live high train low?

this is not true

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Eric Reid AeroFit | Instagram Portfolio
Aerodynamic Retul Bike Fitting

“You are experiencing the criminal coverup of a foreign backed fascist hostile takeover of a mafia shakedown of an authoritarian religious slow motion coup. Persuade people to vote for Democracy.”

Many endurance athletes go to altitude for camps before events... why.. because its effective and being better than others in an endurance sense is their job/livelihood.

Let's not forget that these are also absolutely beautiful places to be. Spin it as "altitude training", while just enjoying some amazing scenery as well.

To have a competitive edge for 10-14 days out of 21 days?

I *heard* from somewhere, can't remember where and of course, can't confirm anything scientific behind it, that it wasn't the training as much as living at altitude that brings the gains. But I also found via that trainingpeaks article about heat & altitude training that it is apparently a lottery by individual as to who responds to altitude training and who doesn't. That article is from 2015 so it's old news and I'm sure someone more in the know will chime in. I'd love to hear whether that bit about living at altitude vs. training is actually true.

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808 > NYC > PDX > YVR
2024 Races: Taupo

To have a competitive edge for 10-14 days out of 21 days?

Except that in most cases, for the Tour for instance, they don't go straight from altitude to the race. The Europeans have their championships the week before so more often than not, any adaptation to higher altitude will have 'expired' by the time they actually hit the high mountains at the end of the first week of the Tour.
IF they go to get away from all the distractions, then I can see that, but from a performance standpoint, I don't think they are gaining anything.

IF they go to get away from all the distractions, then I can see that, but from a performance standpoint, I don't think they are gaining anything.

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Placebo can be one hell of a drug though.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

They're gaining all those extra red blood cells, which is a pretty obvious performance booster.

Not to mention it helps them acclimate and gives them experience at what riding at altitude feels like. The TdF punches up over 8k feet, I sure would like to be able to train that high instead of hopping into a race with no prior high altitude experience.

Oh I'm in agreement with you. What I was suggesting that is if the "evidence" is inconclusive and may depend more on duration of stay at altitude and how you adapt, etc etc. That if you as an athlete THINK you perform well by doing it- that in itself is going to be a crucial detail.

So even if the data is inconclusive and there is a bunch of details that have to be figured out to determine if it actually helps- if you think it helps you and puts you in the right mindset- f'ing do it.

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Brooks Doughtie, M.S.
Exercise Physiology
-USAT Level II

Did you QFT yourself?

What I was suggesting that is if the "evidence" is inconclusive and may depend more on duration of stay at altitude and how you adapt, etc etc//

What evidence is inconclusive, that folks grow more red blood cells at altitude, or that more red blood cells is better than less in the aggregate? Because as far as I know, both those things are generally true for most people. Certainly a lot of athletes go to a lot of trouble, break the rules, and law sometimes, to attain that dynamic. When you look at populations that live high, there is a corresponding relationship to higher HCT%. Seems like the one very true thing Lance told us was that EPO was the game changer when it hit the peloton, more so than any other drug that anyone had tried before, or since...


For me, the 1st reason to go to altitude was to get to a pristine training area with clean air. Pretty much guaranteed that, unless you went to Mexico City of course. But even outside of that smog pit, there was some great high training. 2nd reason was for the lack of distraction, I think that gets overlooked a lot in peoples training plans. And lastly, it was for the real physiological benefit. After about a month, I saw some real changes in my blood markers, EPO production would go up about 40%, and of course the corresponding HCT% along with it. I found that after 6 months, I could raise my HCT about 2%. I was a quick adapter, and as you pointe out earlier, not all people react the same. But even the worst adapters could still get that placebo affect, so there is that...

Not only this (no distractions, hard to get in trouble), but altitude suppresses appetite, making it easier to lose the last few kilograms before a target event.

Ha - not sure wtf I did. Deleted the 2nd one.

^^ This. O2 transport matters a whole lot in all endurance sports & altitude camps offer a (legal) way to reliably improve it!

I've used altitude camps with my crew for many years (& for years before that with the Aussie swim team). We blood test before and after and they absolutely DO lead to consistent gains in hematocrit providing you do it right (right elevation, right training, right nutrition/supplementation etc.) When there is no change in Hb mass, it's generally a case of either too much or too little desaturation for that athlete, or failure to support the training with sufficient carbohydrate, hydration & iron. When these are controlled, gains are consistent.

I wrote some more about what "doing it right" entails here (https://alancouzens.com/blog/altitude-dose.html)

I'm in the middle of one with some of my crew at the moment and, in addition to the expected physiological effects, it's always a good reminder of those other elements that Monty mentions - the benefits of - pristine training locations, clean mountain air and, most important of all - no distractions (except for the periodic Slowtwitch check-in, of course ).

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Alan Couzens, M.Sc. (Sports Science)
Exercise Physiologist/Coach
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Alan_Couzens
Web: https://alancouzens.com

Hello Alan Couzens and All,

Very very old: https://runnersweb.com/...titude_training.html

And since I just read a Funny thing happened to our cat ..... (a funny thing happened on the way to the 'Slowtwitch' forum)

It appears that horses repond to altitude training .... https://vitalizeeq.com/...at-peak-performance/

The most obvious way for the horse to compensate is by increasing its respiration rate, or taking more breaths per minute. As the respiration rate increases so does the heart rate in order to pump oxygenated blood throughout the body.

The body also responds by beginning to generate more red blood cells and capillaries to assist in oxygen transportation. This takes somewhere between 4 to 7 days. After that “acclimation” period, a horse at high altitude may have up to 50% more red blood cells than a horse at sea level!

And dogs respond to altitude training ....

https://www.researchgate.net/...helin-1_serum_levels

Abstract
Living at 2300-m altitude combined with intermittent training at 3500 m leads to cardiovascular alterations in dogs, including increase in systemic and pulmonary artery pressure. Despite moderate to marked hypoxemia at these altitudes, erythrocytosis does not develop. To study humoral mechanisms of acclimatisation to high altitude, erythropoietin (EPO), endothelin-1 (ET-1), big endothelin (Big-ET) and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) were measured in dogs living at 2300 m and intermittently ascending to 3500 m, and compared to the values obtained in control dogs living at 700-900 m.

While the median EPO and ET-1 level in dogs at 2300 m did not differ from the one measured at 700-900 m, exposure from 2300 to 3500 m resulted in significantly elevated EPO and ET-1 levels. Big-ET levels were significantly higher at 2300 and 3500 m compared to dogs at low altitude, but did not differ between 2300 and 3500 m. VEGF was significantly elevated in dogs at 2300 m compared to dogs at low altitude.

The increases in EPO, VEGF, ET-1 and Big-ET are thought to reflect the effect of hypoxia on a cellular level in these dogs. Obviously, the mild elevation of EPO levels observed at 3500 m was not sufficient to cause erythrocytosis. Elevations of the vasoconstrictors Big-ET and ET-1 may play some, but not a central role in hypoxic vasoconstriction in these dogs. Finally, serum VEGF measurement may be a sensitive and useful test to assess hypoxic stress in dogs.
====================
It is interesting that Greyhounds have a different clinical pathology than other breeds.

Looks like the Greyhound's blood has greater natural Oxygen carrying capacity than other breeds ...along with other differences ...




https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/...articles/PMC3816276/

Excerpt:

Conclusion

Greyhounds have hematologic and serum biochemical values that frequently differ from those of non-Greyhound dogs, suggesting that they have differences in many aspects of their physiology.

Establishment of reference intervals specific to the breed or group, ie, sighthounds, is essential for correct diagnosis and management of medical conditions that are monitored by laboratory testing.

As RRG adoptions increase in the US, practicing veterinarians and clinical pathologists will be faced with the challenge of interpreting laboratory values in light of characteristics that typify the breed.

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The Greyhound's blood differences indicate that there may be interventions for humans to increase Oxygen carrying capacity which would be valuable to patients with pulmonary difficulties (and also provide new work for WADA).
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(Leslie Balcerak is the granddaughter of an old friend.)

https://www.amazon.com/...Potato/dp/1612251064

For age 10 and up .....

https://www.amazon.com/...p;s=books&sr=1-2

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Cheers, Neal

+1 mph Faster

Thread's not going how you wanted it to. :)

 
Your implication was that I wanted a particular outcome, but my purpose was to see if there were something that I had not considered that led these athletes to go to such lengths to train at altitude. I admit, the isolation and focus portion makes a lot of sense. I do not believe that the altitude portion of the training makes them better or worse. My observation is that very fit athletes process oxygen efficiently and thus can climb up over mountains justs fine within a certain range. In all my years of riding up mountains, the only time I ever experienced anything like altitude shortness of breath occurred when I attempted to Climb Mt. Evans after living at sea level for six years. And that did not even occur until 13,000 feet. When I did it as a teenager having grown up for the previous 12 years in a little Utah town at 5280 feet (and occasionally rode up to 8,400) I remember hammering the top part of Mt. Evans to beat our following vehicle to the top. That is a 9,000 foot difference and it did not affect me, or all my buddies who were doing it with me.
The highest pass in Europe is 9,000 feet and they have only done that a handful of times in the Tour. The high point of the Tours generally falls in the 7-8,000 foot range and they don't spend more than a few minutes there. There are no 6,000 foot climbs that start at 8,000 feet in any grand tour, I very much doubt that pros NEED to train at altitude full time (especially when you consider that for the Tour, they spend at least two weeks at sea level before they hit the high climbs; I've never read of anyone going straight from an altitude camp to the front step of the Tour).
Now, there are certainly individuals who do better or worse at altitude, but as a species, we are more alike than different.

I think you are missing the big point about altitude training: the primary goal is not to acclimatise to riding at high altitude (which as you point out would be an extremely marginal for most races). Instead, they are trying to boost their haematocrit, which will then enable them to ride harder/faster at any altitude.

That is a 9,000 foot difference and it did not affect me, or all my buddies who were doing it with me. //


This just isn't true, at all. You and your buddies were absolutely affected while riding from 9k to 13k feet. I don't even know what you are trying to say here. Of course you can go easier and feel the same, but rest assured, you all were affected. Now when I did Mt. Evans in a race, you can bet no one was feeling unaffected. When you are on your rivet in a race, things go wrong quickly at that high, and you learn a lot about riding in the clouds. For me and every guy in that race, including the ones that lived at 8k in Colorado, it was near impossible to get out of the saddle and ride that last 4k feet to the 14k ft finish. The O2 demand of riding hard out of the saddle just burnt your legs instantly, and you had to sit and spin in the most oxygen conserving manner you could. It is really silly to say that you and your buddies were not affected, you could have been driven up there and just sat around for a few hours, and people that do tests for this stuff would have found all sorts of things affecting you at 14k feet..


You say you didn't want the tread to go a certain way, yet you keep digging in against the overwhelming consensus here, and from some folks that research this stuff for a living..