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acclimate

Altitude adjustment before a race

http://www.yourrunning.com/forum-altitude_adjustment

Q: Any specific suggestions for preparing for a marathon at a higher altitude than one is used to? I live, train, and run about 35 miles a week at sea level, and will be participating in the 2007 Colorado Colfax Marathon. The air in Denver is, of course, much thinner than here. I'll arrive in Denver three or four days before the race. Generally speaking, is that enough time to acclimate? Anything else I can do in advance to prep? Thanks!

Simon says:
Get to Denver at the last possible moment.

A/C

Posted by baselbutt on 2/21/2007 on baselbutt's blog | Groups: North Pole Marathon
How low can you go?

I'll leave it up to the experts to decide whether this is a good idea or not. When I was training for Badwater last year, someone (I can't remember who) told me that the only way to truly get used to the heat is to simply be hot all the time. It made sense - I mean if you think about other things we do to train - you have a hilly race, you train on hills - you have a marathon to do, you run 18-20 milers - you're a boxer, you practice getting punched in the face...

The day I found out I got in to Badwater, I let out an audible scream - broke the news to my wife - and then got up and walked over to the thermostat in my office. On our floor every other office has a thermostat that controls the temperature in that office and the one next to it. Luckily, there are an odd number of offices on each side of the building, so my thermostat affects only my little world. Not being sure how to work it as I've always used the door to regulate temperature (too hot, open the door; too cold, shut the door), I hit the "up" button until numbers stopped changing.. It made it up to 90.. I then found a way to disable the auto shut-off, so hot air would continue to blow regardless of the actual temperature. Long story short, I spent my 8+ hour days shut up in a 90 degree room with a 180 degree view of the San Francisco Bay. For the four months leading up to Badwater, I sweated away day after day (adding a V-neck sweater from time to time to amplify the "effort"). By the time the race rolled around, I felt a chill every time it dropped below 80.

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