To Altitude or not to Altitude

For the last few days we have been debating as to how we will spend the last 7 weeks of our trip. We have several things in concrete, i.e. the races that Andrea would like to do in California, but apart from those few days not much else has been planned.

As things stand we have another 16 days in Eugene before we head south to Palo Alto (just outside San Fransisco) where Andrea will do her first 5000m on the track of the season in the Stanford Invitational Track Meet. A couple of weeks later we want to be in Carlsbad, CA, a few hours south of Los Angeles, where Andrea wants to run in the Worlds Fastest 5km Road Race. We are hoping that Andrea can get into the elite race (just for the experience), but we will have to see how things go. Then a week later we will be heading back up to Walnut, CA where Andrea will likely do her second and last track 5000m of the season in the Mt Sac Relays. This is actually a four day festival of running, so we are intrigued about what goes on there. After Andrea’s second race we only have 12 days before we fly back, with the last three of those spent in Las Vegas. No doubt we’ll be partying and spending the remainder of our money. We’ll still be in bed by 9pm though so don’t worry! This means that we have around 3 weeks in California with few plans of where to stay and what to do and we also have a 7 or 8 day window after Andrea’s last race before we head to Vegas. It is in this window when we are thinking of driving to Flagstaff Arizona to do some altitude training before driving to Vegas for the end of our trip.

For those that don’t know, altitude training is a big thing in the world of distance running. The idea is that because of the reduced oxygen in the air at higher elevations the body is forced to work harder with the oxygen that is available. On returning to sea-level you are then able to utilise the higher levels of oxygen better and essentially run faster.

Some of the theories around training at altitude are that you need to be up there for longer than a week to start realising the benefits of the higher elevations, although some people are able to get great results from even just a few days. It seems to be a very individual thing. It also has the possibility of just tiring Andrea out a great deal (with the significant risk that it may even wreck the remainder of Andrea’s season - it should be noted though that the main races of Andrea‘s season are over here in the US, the ones in the UK won‘t be anywhere near the standard and will be more for fun really). It is something we need to weigh up. On one side we think going to altitude would be a good experience and if it is something we want to take advantage of in future then even going for a week would be a good experience. However, there is the real possibility that we may not get it right and Andrea may not race well when we get back to the UK. It is something we are considering and we will try to work out what our overall plans are in the next few days so that we may begin to sort out our accommodation.

So there you go. Those are our plans. We are unsure of whether to go to altitude in the middle of April and we are also not sure of how we should divide our time around California. If anyone has any ideas on either then let us know, we would be grateful for any input. Thanks…