I live at ~400ft. Now I am on vacation at 6000ft and run on a hotel tm. It’s not my first time here, so I experienced this many times before, but now I decided to consult ST 
So the thing is that I struggle to maintain my half marathon tempo for 10, max 15min. For simplicity sake, I can run 14kmh in my home town for 90min, here I am close to hart attack after 15min
Am i supersensitive on altitude change or this is normal?
PS I can not run outside it’s all snow and ice
I live at ~400ft. Now I am on vacation at 6000ft and run on a hotel tm. It’s not my first time here, so I experienced this many times before, but now I decided to consult ST
So the thing is that I struggle to maintain my half marathon tempo for 10, max 15min. For simplicity sake, I can run 14kmh in my home town for 90min, here I am close to hart attack after 15min
Am i supersensitive on altitude change or this is normal?
PS I can not run outside it’s all snow and ice
It sounds like you’ve only been at altitude for a few days, so that may be a sig part of it. OTOH, I’ve heard that everyone reacts diff to altitude. I think you would need to stay at your 6000 ft vacation spot for 2-3 weeks before you would be fully acclimated.
yes, I am here my third day, and will stay for 7 more (unfortunately I can not be on holiday for 3 weeks during winter), still I can not believe how strong this 5500ft of altitude difference are
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I live at ~400ft. Now I am on vacation at 6000ft and run on a hotel tm. It’s not my first time here, so I experienced this many times before, but now I decided to consult ST
So the thing is that I struggle to maintain my half marathon tempo for 10, max 15min. For simplicity sake, I can run 14kmh in my home town for 90min, here I am close to hart attack after 15min
Am i supersensitive on altitude change or this is normal?
PS I can not run outside it’s all snow and ice
It sounds like you’ve only been at altitude for a few days, so that may be a sig part of it. OTOH, I’ve heard that everyone reacts diff to altitude. I think you would need to stay at your 6000 ft vacation spot for 2-3 weeks before you would be fully acclimated.
And I think you Will never be fully acclimated. There is less oxygen up there!
We have a vacation cabin that is about 9300 feet above sea level and I can usually run pretty well for two or three days and then I get a bit of altitude sickness.
You’ll be slowed down 15ish seconds per mile.
Do you really not know that altitude slows people down?
I have to agree with the last poster, you just go slower at altitude. That is why if you run or swim you get a handicap for the national governing bodies on your race times. The higher you go, the more the handicap. So if you are going for olympic qualifying times standards, you get to subtract whatever that handicap is from your official altitude time.
There is no adapting to the point where you run your sea level times, if you did, then those low times would then be faster. You can get better at racing and training at altitude, but you have to adjust all paces and expectations. And yes, some people do better than others, and there is nothing you can do about that except hope you are one of the lucky ones.(or have some Pharma help) Same goes for racing in heat and cold, some people are just more suited for environmental differences…
I live at 5600 ft and am usually winded on our first and second snowshoe trip up at 9000+. But by our third trip I am ready to rock.
You’ll be feeling better after a few more days.
drn92
There tends to be lower humidity at high altitude so additional hydration is always a good idea. Increased iron consumption MIGHT help, but if nothing else it is a good excuse to order a big old steak.
hey mate -
not unusual at all. there’s often a paradoxical period of supercompensation when you first arrive at altitude - so you might find that your very first day you have a good run, but after that you struggle.
in my experience the best thing for me to do at altitude was just long mileage. i did some track workouts that were OK, especially the shorter, sharper stuff. but ‘tempo’ or strength-type work just doesn’t work for me at real altitude. my heart rate goes through the roof, i can’t hold pace, everything hurts. . . and in the end it’s a bad workout.
drink lots of water - it’s easy to dehydrate at that height and it affects your training much more than at sea level. and maybe consider some supplements - gingko used to be popular in loading up for altitude, and some swear by iron. i used to eat blood pudding in my altitude days and had crazy hemoglobin numbers! not sure what else they’re trying these days. . .
refs: lived in the rift valley in kenya for a year and ran a lot; raced the mount everest marathon.
good luck,
-mike
I live at sea level, and when visiting the inlaws in Denver I just make sure to use my hrm and train by heart rate (even if it feels way slow pacewise).
It’s also much better suited to long runs than intervals. I find that once I go into the red zone at altitude, it’s much harder to come back.
Hardest run of my like was in Cusco, Peru. 11,152 above sea level. At that altitude, there is only 67% of the oxygen available at sea level. It seemed way worse than that running.
At 6000ft, there is 81% of the oxygen available at sea level.
Thank you all. After 5 days I noticed that the biggest impact this altitude has on me is on tempo run, so I decided to do it all by HR. Now instead to run 4:20/4:25min/km I run 4:55 and feel the same
As far as I know, you have to be at least 3 weeks at high alt to gain some benefits, and that “superpower” at sea level should last ~20 days, am I correct?