My Running Log

whats level 7? if that is elevated significantly you blew my seven mile tempo away.

It varies between a 0% and 7% incline, I think. So an average of 3.5%. If only I could do that on my own, without the treadmill pushing me along. The altitude you ran at, plus the fact that you ran alone, far exceeds what i did. On Tuesday i pushed hard and only got to 6:46 pace. But would be fun to train together. Then i could follow in your shadow to speedy times.

I would be interested in seeing some quantitative data on how altitude affects performance. I was talking to Alan Culpepper at the Bolder Boulder in 2006 about it and he said it is an exponential function, i.e. harder to go from 4600 feet to 6000 than from zero to 1400. I will have to see if I can find any hard data, do you know of any?

I don't know of any data sets that are available. I wonder what evidence there is for an exponential curve. There's a really good book about running that you should read that has a section on this. It's called Lore of Running. It's by an MD who has done decades of research on running performance and also reviews lots of research from others in the book. He says the research suggests that the best benefits from training at altitude come from training above 7000' because that's where you start to increase in red-blood cell count. So this would suggest there's a sudden difference in performance once you reach that level. Not sure if I believe that 100%, because it doesn't seem logical that there would be a sudden difference at a certain altitude. Anyway, his theories are based on his "Central Governor Model," which suggests that our brains start to shut down muscle activity when it senses we are in danger. Some people say that altitude is a limiting factor because we can't get oxygen to the muscles, but he refutes that and says it's because we get less oxygen to our brain. At least that's the way I understood it.

Steve, the guys who won the marathon and the half marathon in Mesquite were from Alamosa Colorado (elevation 7600). the guy who won the marathon ran an incredible 2:19 on that nasty course. so the above 7000 feet training seemed to pay off. But you would probably have to live and acclimate there for it to make a difference.

I found this:

http://www.runworks.com/calculator.html

I plugged in some numbers and it came back completely linear as 2.5 seconds per mile for every 1000 feet. says it comes from Daniels running formula. I have that book so will have to go look. Culpepper is on the cover of that book by the way. I was lucky to get to chat with him one on one in Boulder for about ten minutes, really nice guy. I'll look into the lore of running, thanks for the tip!