Discussion: Higher Altitude Adaptation

My 14 year old son ran an orienteering course last weekend at 8200 ft. We live at 3000 ft. He noticed that he was unusually out of breath while running due to the elevation change. He will be running at the Tahoe 3 day which is about 6500 ft. My question is: is it worthwhile to go up to Tahoe a couple of days early for adaptation purposes? Is 2 days enough time to get any benefit?

The time it takes to adjust to altitude varies significantly from person to person. If your son was running a single race, then given the choice of arriving 2-3 days before or arriving 1 day before, I think the standard advice is that the second option is better. Supposedly, people feel the worst on their third or fourth day at altitude and then begin to improve after around 7 days, with full acclimatization happening after 2-3 weeks. But, since your son is running a 3-day event, this type of general advice is not very helpful. It may be worth it for him to arrive a few days early, so that he may be somewhat used to the altitude by the second or third race. But, as I said, altitude acclimatization is a personal thing. And although 6,500 feet is certainly high enough to feel some shortness of breath, it is unlikely that he will experience any type of extreme altitude sickness and unlikely he will be significantly slower on an orienteering course, even if it feels that way.

The ultimate decision will probably not make much difference, at least physically, but it may be beneficial from a psychological viewpoint to come a few days early, so that he can go for a few easy runs and remember what it feels like to have slightly less oxygen.

Everyone probably has a breaking point where they can really feel the difference. For me it's somewhere between Tahoe and Bear Wallow (I think that 8000' is about where it really starts to feel different), so your son might not notice it as much at Tahoe, either. I'd take him up for a run at around Tahoe altitude (somewhere above Prison Camp?) and see how he feels. But hey, if you can arrive at Tahoe a few days early, why not? ;-)

I have to drive up from sea level on day of event. But my biggest motivations to go early are practice time in terrain, and swimming in beautiful alpine lakes.

Altitude may slow you down, but dehydration will compound the issue. The mountain air can be deceptively dry, so don't forget to drink lots of water.

Last August, I did the Pike's Peak Ascent, which starts at 6300 feet and ends at 14,100 feet. I live at 350 feet above see level. I got to Colorado 5 days before the race, and stayed in Woodland Park, which I believe is around 8000 feet. I did some running or hiking each day that I was there, and found that with each passing day, the altitude was bothering me less. I was able to successfully complete the race, in a faster time than I was expecting.

I've heard that the conventional wisdom is to either get to altitude two weeks or more in advance, or else only one day before the event, but based on my experience, that doesn't really seem true. I feel that I was much better off spending 5 days there before the race, than if I only got there one day before the race. And based on how I was adjusting during those 5 days, I think I would have been better off with 2 or 3 days than 1 day as well. That's my experience only; other people's will no doubt be different.

To RLShadow: you might have felt worse on the first day, but you might have still given better results on a race than on day 4 or 5.
To Christina: That's right, the limiting factor for delivering oxigen to the muscles is the ability of the blood to transport oxygen, at sea level. As the altitude increase there is a point for each person where the amount of oxygen extracted from the air levels up with the delivery rate of your blood. Go any higher and you start feeling the deep breathing.

So for each person (and for different training levels for the same person ) the effect and the strenght of high altitude will be different.

Personally, I think the reason why people often feel awful a few days after arriving at altitude is that they spend the first couple of days overexerting. As far as I'm concerned, any time you can spend at altitude in advance of the race is good, just take it easy when you first get there. Dick's plan sounds great to me, some running or hiking each day, but don't overdo it.

I usually feel it on the first day. I went straight to 8300 feet at Mt. Pinos a few years ago, and got sickness that diminished when I descended to Gorman (around 4000ft?).

I notice that I have to really think to drink a lot at altitude, or I get behind. That would be my theory for the 3rd day thing.

Is there any advantage to going significantly higher for the 2-3 days before with very light training, then descending to competiotn altitude? My personal experience of spending 3 days in Cuzco (11,000) before doing strenuous hiking at Macchu Picchu (7500-8500) seems to bear out some merit to that. Likewise, before last year's Peaceful Valley CO events, two of us arrived a day early and did a hike in Rocky Mtn Nat'l Park to around 13,000. Again, after that, the 7500 or so felt easier, but maybe that's all psychological?

I have never raced at altitude, but some experience from being at altitutde to ski (9000-14,000) is that water/hydration is extremely important.

On a somewhat related note, I remember reading about a pro mountain biker who used an oxygen deprivation tent to sleep in (it mimics sleeping at 10000+), but ended up getting very sick because he kept training as hard. He then had to take a few weeks off training to get better. Although this case is extreme because he was using a tent, I believe his conclusion was that when using a oxygen deprivation tent, one needs to cut back training significantly. Not sure if you can can apply this to a pre-race scenario at all.

My experience the last two winters at Tahoe/Donner Pass was for ski-o. Any hills on the first couple days were tough; by day three I no longer felt winded and was definitely stronger.

So my target is to arrive a couple days before the key races and sleep at least two nights high. This also worked on Orizaba in Mexico where we climbed to 18,600 having adapted for three days at 14,000. Much better than trying Rainier from sea level to the summit on the same day, the zero adaption approach -- a total failure for me.

I live at a pretty high altidude, 5500ft. One of our usual orienteering haunts is around 8000ft. When we have orienteers who live at the coast competing there we always hear complaints. Personally i dont notice a difference but 8000 ft is a big change. Normally te first day is fine for them but the second is when it really hits them hard. With this in mind i would say a few days to get used to the altitude is not bad advice. U need both time to get used to the altitude as well as time for your body to start producing more red blood cells to compinsate for the reduced oxygen intact. I doubt there is any risk of altitude sickness below around 11000 ft but ur son will struggle for breath a bit. And tell him to drink water, the higher you go the less moisture the air holds so u loose more water in all forms.

Get up to altitude as soon as possible and drink a lot of fluids. If it is really high altitude, the going up needs to be done in stages to give the body a chance to acclimate.

Loss of appetite also goes with the territory, so make sure you fuel up enough for the latter stages in the race. If you are nauseous, then you have done too much too soon. Go lower until you feel better.

Hey Jeff, just saw some photos from your trip. How high did you go this last month? Did you have to do any staging?

I was definitely writing from recent personal experience. We got up to 18,400 on Kala Pattar. Got great pictures of Everest an hour after the Chinese supposedly summited with the Olympic torch. Unless the weather changed significantly in that hour, it didn't happen.

Our progress was slow to allow for acclimatization. Roughly, we started at 8200ft and increased our altitude about 2000ft per day.

Even then it was too fast for the wussiest in our group, namely me. I lost my lunch on the side of the trail on a day we hiked to 13000. Luckily we were camping at 12000 that night which helped a lot.

One of the guys in the group had done some orienteering in Massachusetts. Of course, he knew Peter Gagarin.

I have done some climbing and I don't buy this theory that the first day at altitude will be a good day to race and also the third or fourth day.

I recommend that you get up to your goal altitude as soon as you can and go lower only if you feel sick. The more time you are at altitude, the the faster your body will adapt. Drink copious amounts of water and relax. Sleep more, eat more. The whole time you are there, kicking back with your feet up and a good book, you will be acclimatizing.

I don't know any physiological experiments, but from personal experience, I have found that when I go to Laramie (7000 feet), the first day is horrible, gasping for breath at even a minor climb, but by the 3rd day, it is much better, and I am sure it continues to improve over the next couple of weeks, were I to stay there that long.

Same here - takes me 2 or 3 days.

I like the effect of the altitude situation in reverse. When I was living in the Rocky Mountains at 4,800' and ran the next day in Indiana (probably somewhere around 100'), I felt like I could run forever! That was so cool. It was just practice running, so no ethics lapse for a race, but it was neat to experience that.

Maybe I'm the minority on this but I can't see that racing in Indiana even the moment you stepped off a plane from wherever you were living in the Rocky Mountains would amount to an ethical lapse.

Yeah - that could probably fill an entire thread up with viewpoints on that. I don't know if "ethics lapse" is good word choice on my part. I just mean to say that ever since experiencing what I explained, I've had the thought perhaps good sportsman conduct for me is to make sure I don't race right after coming from high altitude living to a lower altitude race...perhaps give it a couple days. Or maybe it really doesn't make that big of a difference. It could be I was just having a good running day, but it certainly seemed different enough from normal to warrant the thought. Any thoughts?

Disclaimer: Given my record of orienteering, any benefit I could gain from a high-to-low alt situation ih the future would be completely negligible as I would probably lose all that time within the first 2 or 3 controls!

Now I live in Michigan so I don't have this to worry about anymore. Now I have to worry about getting to high altitude places early as we've been discussing in the thread so that all things can be equal. How the tables turn!

I must not be a good sportsman. If I'd the opportunity to come down from altitude like that, I would enter all the races I could at the lower level. I would treat the advantage like racing age-groups. When I turned 40, I raced the roads every Saturday and Sunday for weeks.

If coming down from altitude is an issue, then so are training and eating properly. IMHO.

Haha! Darn those people that eat healthy!!