[Brian Bauer]

about 4 months ago I moved to a town at 5700ft of altitude.  Within 10-2o mins, I can reach my training grounds at 7,000 – 9,500ft. so basically I am doing the opposite of what is generally recommended: Live high, train low, I am living low and training high.  in a typically week I am generally training above 7,000 ft for about 4-5hrs.  My question is this: am I acclimatizing to elevations about 7,000ft by training there a few hours per week?  over months these weekly hours stack up, but am I getting the same benefit as someone who spends a solid 4 weeks at an altitude camp at 8,000ft?

[Scott Johnston]

Brian:

You are probably not getting the same acclimatization benefit as someone who lives at 7000ft.  In experience training XC skiers who lived at 5500ft in Colorado but trained at altitudes between 8-9000ft  is that they did get some acclimaitization effoct but the main thing we saw was that when they races at low elevations they had gotten slower but training so high. As you have already experienced, you have to move a lot slower at 7000ft than you do at low elevations.  There’s just not enough O2 to support faster movement. Doing this day and day out engrains slow movement patterns.  Most of your Skimo races are at altitude so this is not such a big problem since you are not racing Skimo at sea level. However I think you mmight see some benefit from doing a speed or endurance intensity session as low as you can easily find 1x/week.

Scott

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