Looking for some discussion on best place for a one month home base in August 2019 at altitude out west. Currently live in Greenville, SC. Need to unplug for a while (primary objective) and will be training for a race in early September
Plan to ride road and MTB. Envision long climbing rides on the road bike and getting lost in the woods for hours on the MTB. Some focused sessions on tri bike will be necessary too. Access to pool needed and masters crew a plus. Will run base miles mostly on trail and hopefully have access to a local track for some specific sessions.
Will have family along for part of trip (maybe 2weeks) until school starts back. Two boys currently ages 5 and 7 and girl 17mo, so want to be able to plan some good family activities.
Have spent some time in Breckinridge and like the town. Have a friend who did Breck epic this year and spoke highly of the terrain and local race organizers. Open to ideas like Durango, although I have not had opportunity to visit there. Have spent time in Aspen but only during ski season.
Plan to rent a house or condo hopefully walking distance to food and microbrew.
I highly doubt its the “best place” to spend a month training, but as I live in Albuquerque I’ll throw it out there. It fits all of your criteria, although I don’t mountain bike so not too sure how those trails are but I think they’re good. Its only ~5300ft so not quite the altitude you would get in flagstaff but definitely not sea level. A couple of different master’s programs including a good one at the University of New Mexico, some good riding including a few great climbs in the mountains, fantastic running trails both in the foothills and a flat dirt path by the river that is ideal for tempo workouts. I’d say the one thing it might be lacking in is good family activities but there are certainly some around here (hiking, museums). On top of all that the beer scene is fantastic in my opinion and the endurance sports community is significant.
Now I would have to imagine somewhere like Boulder has all of this and does it a little better but Albuquerque isn’t quite as cliche, and would probably be significantly cheaper!
Why not go back to Breck? You’ll likely get a house or condo walking distance to restaurants and shops and there’s a bunch of activities for the family. Good access to trails to run and ride and a decent bike path to avoid cars. Good roads and climbs (vail pass, Ute pass, Loveland pass). I might be biased (lived there for a while and hoping to go back in feb).
Looking for some discussion on best place for a one month home base in August 2019 at altitude out west. Currently live in Greenville, SC. Need to unplug for a while (primary objective) and will be training for a race in early September
Plan to ride road and MTB. Envision long climbing rides on the road bike and getting lost in the woods for hours on the MTB. Some focused sessions on tri bike will be necessary too. Access to pool needed and masters crew a plus. Will run base miles mostly on trail and hopefully have access to a local track for some specific sessions.
Will have family along for part of trip (maybe 2weeks) until school starts back. Two boys currently ages 5 and 7 and girl 17mo, so want to be able to plan some good family activities.
Have spent some time in Breckinridge and like the town. Have a friend who did Breck epic this year and spoke highly of the terrain and local race organizers. Open to ideas like Durango, although I have not had opportunity to visit there. Have spent time in Aspen but only during ski season.
Plan to rent a house or condo hopefully walking distance to food and microbrew.
I would do several high altitude trips every year when I was full time training. For your list and my favorite, Lake Tahoe. That place has it all, and there are a few little towns at different spots around the lake, all with most your wish list. And the lake is not that cold at that time, and you can add all kinds of other water sports like paddling, kayaking, stand up, etc. I would just show up with my camper and all the toys, surfski, MTB, tribike, paddle board, and some good trail running shoes. Spend a couple weeks at the 6k lake elevation, and you can easily hit 10k+ on rides and runs…
You might check about altitude and recovery. If you are looking for a real fitness advantage, then Breck might be too high. Taking a nap at 9-10,000 feet above sea level is exercise, so you don’t recover as well. I think the ideal altitude is supposed to be around 6-7000, which kind of explains why the OTC is in the Springs. So Colorado Spring, Park City, Santa Fe, maybe Tahoe.
Sun Valley/Ketchum, Idaho meets most of your criteria. Town is at 5900ish, and you can get higher if you want.
There’s kinda only one “real” road in town though, so keep that in mind for TT work. Would recommend getting long rides in on a gravel bike-so many routes around here! And mountain biking is absolutely stellar… 400 miles of singletrack from town.
Tahoe was not on my radar for some reason but makes total sense. Any area of the lake that you would recommend in particular ? Better start looking at VRBO now as August is probably high season there for lake accommodations.
Flagstaff. There is a reason olympians go train there. It has everything that you want.
the BEST part about training in flagstaff is that you can leave flagstaff to train. sleep/live high and train low (~30-40min drive to get down to a reasonable altitude). which is why the olympians train there.
Good point. The last time I did something similar I spent a week in Denver, several days in Boulder and then went up into Rocky Mtn National Park for a week before settling into Breck, so of the trip so was probably more of a gradual ascent.
And pay n take. Spent some time in a Flagstaff and met some good people there. Italian national swim team was visiting pool while I was dropping on with masters.
Agree. I went to NAU and wish I had never left that town. awesome place to train, if 7k isn’t. And Telluride and Durango are an easy weekend trip from Flagstaff if you want some diversity in your training and some more challenging mt climbs.
Any area of the lake that you would recommend in particular ? //
All depends on what you are ultimately looking for. South Tahoe is close to a lot of stuff, including casinos. Truckee is more out there and has that mountain town feel. I think your best bet is to just get on VRBO and look around the lake for some great places, they will tell you how far you are from local eateries and such…
I used to camp there in vans and RV’s, so I would be between emerald bay and Truckee at an Indian held campground, forget the name… But I always wanted to be right on the water, to cool off, and an easy start to all my H20 activities, and of course the scenery. Something about looking at water all day, calms the body…
Flagstaff would be a good choice, but maybe not the best for road riding. You have about three good routes (Lake Mary rd.out and back, Sunset Crater, Snow Bowl rd. also out and backs), then it gets tougher. Lake Tahoe/Truckee area would be good, but more traffic than I’d prefer. Breckenridge might be too high. Durango is good, but swimming options not as good as the others. Colorado front range, possibly.
Flagstaff. There is a reason olympians go train there. It has everything that you want.
the BEST part about training in flagstaff is that you can leave flagstaff to train. sleep/live high and train low (~30-40min drive to get down to a reasonable altitude). which is why the olympians train there.
Living at 6,000 to 7,000ft and training below 5,000ft is your best, reasonable, bet.
Can you do this in Flagstaff? I’m unsure of where to go for lower elevation training.
Other places like this.
Tahoe to Reno & others
Park City & area to SLC
MT Lemmon to Tucson
Most of the low points in Colorado are over 5k, which is too high for optimal training.
If training effect is #1, these are your answers.
If you just want a vacation in the mountains, choose some place pretty.
Flagstaff is good. We spent 3 summers there. August might be the tail end of ‘monsoon season’, so there may be some showers.
Yes, road riding is somewhat limited, but you can get in good rides. There are a ton of trails for running and MTBing. For the time that you will be there, I don’t think that the road rides will get overly boring. As mentioned: Lake Mary + Mormon Lake loop, Lake Mary South to Clint’s Well, Snowbowl climb, Wupatki Crater, and we would do an out and back into ‘The Res’ depending. We did all of the rides on a tri/tt bike.
There is the NAU pool and a country club pool that you can buy a pass to, and I think that NAU will still have a Master’s group. I would contact the NAU master’s group since a lot of University pools have some down time in the August time frame. They have a new Natatorium there, so it may not be an issue. We only swam in the old one.
Sedona is only about 1 hour or so away, and you can also road ride there though it is a bit hillier and parts of it can be busy. There is a pool there that is really nice and a track, though I don’t know the hours for the track. Sedona will be quite a bit warmer than Flag in August.
Sedona is at about 4,500 feet. Flagstaff is right around 7,000.
The difficulty can be in finding accommodation depending on your budget and whether or not NAU is in session.
Flag is also set up well since there are quite a few teams (US and Int’l) that go there. There are plenty of resources for therapy, etc. while you are there.