Is it expected to have a (relatively) bad performance if you normaly train at sea level and race for the first time at 6,200 ft?
How many days do you need to adapt to that altitude if you normally live/train at sea level? Would it be better to arrive a day before than three days before?
I will appreciate your comments and/or advise.
best wishes,
Sergio
Never raced in altitude, but travel to Quito very frequently which sits at 9200 ft (coming from Miami). For 3 - 4 days I cannot exercise at all. I become short of breath simply climbing stairs. From what I have been told, it takes your body 3 - 4 days to produce the additional red blood cells needed to resume vigorous activity.
FWIW, I was just in San Luis Potosi (6200’) for a week and never really felt good training the whole time I was there (I live at 400’). I could train at lower intensities but I don’t think I could have raced well there. But I don’t handle altitude that well. 
From what I heard there’s two ways to race at altitude… arrive the day before or two weeks before.
From talking to others, altitude effects people in different ways. For me, arriving the day before (6-7000’) has not worked well at all. I have done OK arriving the morning of the race (within driving distance, 7000’) but suffered after the race was over. My best result (5700’) was arriving 4 days before with easy training sessions and staying extremely well hydrated the whole time prior to the race. I was living at about 40’ above sea level when doing these races.
Dean Wilson
www.anaerobiczone.com
Yes, a relatively bad performance is expected. Arriving the day before is just a really bad idea. The sooner you get there the better. On the other hand if you are training in high altitude and will race at sea level, the later you get down there the better.
For example, it took me four days of (really) light training before I started to feel my breath “normal” when coming to altitude.
most comments above ring true.
it is very personal… there are typically other factors as well (typically dramatically different humidity etc).
But I have a plot somewhere that shows that typically most athletes perform best within 24hrs of arriving but then get worse until about 4-6days @ altitude.
I have found that to be true (for me) back when I lived @ sea level. now, here @ 4500, I feel pretty comfortable moving around with little to no acclimation period.
I assume you don’t have 3 weeks to burn 
hth,
g
I have been told that you allow 1 day for your body to adjust to every 1000 feet. This came from my old swim coach.
6000 feet = 6 days
9000 feet = 9 days
It’s simmilar going the opposite direction as well - if you train @ 6000 feet, you benefit @ sea level for 6 days.
My First Sergeant in the Army used to tell me “Running at a high altitude is no big deal. The air is thin, so you need to run faster to collect more of it.”
Seriously though, it takes me a month of breathing lung daggers before I adjust, and even then, I’m noticably slower at a high altitude than sea level. Even when I lived in Fort Huachuca for over a year, I still ran slower. But a least the scenery is pretty.
From my experience, the day before is better than 3-4 days. I’m usually pretty good the first day or so then after 2 or 3 days the cumulative effect of the altitude starts kicking my butt. Just tell yourself that you can ride much faster since you are no longer held back by that dense, heavy sea level air.
it is expected, yes…
I used to go to university at sea level and return to 6000ft for vacations, normally took about a week to adjust to the altitude again.
When I competed in skiing it would take a few weeks to aclimate to 9000 feet. Some ski vacationers would claim it took a week but they never stayed longer than a week so they didn’t know any better. I used to spend a week in Moab mountain biking before the ski season at I guess around 4000 ft and I still felt winded at the end of the week. So bottom line you will never be able to compete with the top locals with your limited time. I would guess it would be better to get there as earlier as possible and be well rested and ride smart.
I just looked in Chris Carmichals Ultimate Ride book and he states Best: arrive at least 3 weeks before, preferable 4-6. Good: arrive 2 weeks before and reduce your training intensity or volume by 30-40% and gradually increase to 75% to 80% of your sea level doses over the next ten days. Acceptable: Arrive within 24 hrs well rested and hydrated. He has no scientific evidence but has found athletes compete better within 24 hrs of competion. Reasons may be becouse of dehydration and trouble sleeping at altitude. At altitude your heart rate will increase and through your sleep off. That is what I was told, though I never had trouble sleeping but heard of people complaining of it. Enjoy your trip.
Every body is different. I live in low altitudes. I’ve gone on several MTB trips where we stayed at around 6200 ft (Park City UT, for example), and went up and down between that altitude and 9000+. I don’t really notice a difference at 6-7000 ft (maybe it’s all those years of flute playing).
Maybe it won’t be as bad as you think.
“I just looked in Chris Carmichals Ultimate Ride book and he states Best: arrive at least 3 weeks before, preferable 4-6. Good: arrive 2 weeks before and reduce your training intensity or volume by 30-40% and gradually increase to 75% to 80% of your sea level doses over the next ten days. Acceptable: Arrive within 24 hrs well rested and hydrated. He has no scientific evidence but has found athletes compete better within 24 hrs of competion.”
This is probably the best of the information presented in this post. However, if you choose to do the 24 hr. method, and it goes bad, it will probably go really bad. This is an all-or-nothing method and only works for some people. If this race is important I would encourage you to try to do a test at altitude before committing to the 24 hr. method for a race. (Cheapest/most time efficient test would be to drive to the highest altitude you can, that is closest to race altitude, within about 8 hours or less of your normal training location and do a 3-4 km running test. Warm up and run as if it is a race. Go back to your normal training location and do the same distance after a couple of days rest. Compare times. If you can get near the race altitude this test will give you a ball park percentage of your performance loss. It should also tell you if the 24 hr. method will work at all.
Living and training at 7k-9K. If I were you, I’d try to sleep <4000 (lower the better) and drive up right before the race. Realize that the air is thinner and you’ll be faster at 6500 than 0 for a given wattage. Aerobic efforts aren’t much different though spikes in effort will take their toll. Air tends to be drier - drink more.
Anywhere from 1 day to 3-4 days is probably the worst case scenario.
What kind of race?
Dave
Everyone does worse at altitude, even those who live here. No matter how much you live here, there is still less oxygen than at sea level. So, adjust your expectations.
From what I understand, the Kenyans who race the Bolder Boulder 10k (5400’) usually follow one of two strategies – either (1) get here as close to the race as possible or (2) try to get at least a week (preferably more) of acclimatization. The theory behind strategy (1) is that being here for a few days just messes up your sleep and tires you out without much real acclimatization.
I have never read any science on this, so FWIW, I believe that the altitude issue is somewhat dependent on the intensity of your race. In a 5k race, you’re really gonna feel the effects, because breathing tends to be such a limiter at those paces. (the lungs give out long before the legs). In really long races, you might not notice the altitude as much – the legs give out while the lungs are fine.
Thanks to all for your comments. Sergio will be on vacation. Maybe he can spend five days in a town about the same height as the city of the event and a week in the place of the event.
Best wishes,
Sergio
Sergio,
We live at sea level and have raced at altitude (9,000+ feet) several times.
I was told by the coaches at the US Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs similar to what Carmichael advises… that on average it takes 3 weeks to acclimatize completely and if you can’t do that (who can?) then it’s best to arrive 24 hours in advance because the body will not suffer the consequences as badly in that short a period. They said the worst was 3-7 days when the body typically suffers the worst.
Like the others said, hydration is very important as well… additionally I think that everyone deals with altitude differently so you might just have to go through some trial and error to see what works.
Another tip:
Coming from sea level we raced in Mammoth at 9,000 feet and arrived the day before like most of the sea-level pros. Some of them were smart, though, and they stayed in Bishop which was like 1.5 hours away but at 4,000 feet so that they could sleep at a lower altitude. We, however, stayed in the lodge at the top of the mountain and although we were ok on day two, from then on it really got miserable because we didn’t sleep very well at night and really lost our appetites. Sleep low, race high.
Lastly, from talking to everyone I also noticed that the smaller, leaner athletes seemed to suffer the least (Kiersten included).
3 weeks. You also wont get any benefit from altitude training unless you have been “up” there for 3 to 4 weeks. I grew up at 6000 plus feet. I use to back there for a tri every year. Swimming was ok if you pace yourself, biking was ok as well, but once I hit that run…CRAP…
Probaly why we were always undefeated on our home turf at football. You could really see the other team start to drag ass in that second half…
Thats why there is that tried and true…Train LOW/sleep HIGH
Thanks for the info IronDad. Please say hello to the kids.
Best wishes!
Sergio