A Day at Altitude Camp

I am writing from Andorra, where I’m at a training camp with a group of athletes preparing for the second part of the European racing season at altitude. Being at these camps is an event that has become quite common over the past years that I’ve done more and more work with cycling teams. It is really easy to get caught in the daily shuffle at these camps - which to be honest is not very high level coaching, it is more like making sure we have a good route for training, that the car has gas in it, and that the hotel knows our meal schedule for the day. Over the years I’ve come to realize that some of the slicker stuff, like diving deep into the workouts, just doesn’t matter on the ground at these camps if the basics aren’t dialed first. The basics of good route, good food, and calm logistics, are what make or break a training camp. However, I understand it’s not super interesting to read about how to make a route on Ride With GPS so I wanted to write a post walking through a day at altitude camp and showing a bit more of what it’s like.

Today is day 7 at altitude camp, where we have been staying at 2400m elevation (7875 ft) and training mostly between 1200m and 2400m. So far from a training perspective we’ve kept the intensity low, mostly accumulating volume in zone 1 and zone 2, with a little bit of work in zone 3. For the zone 3 work I like to use heart rate (HR) to guide the efforts rather than power. This is a really important part of not overextending in the first week of altitude. To check the response to the first week of training we’ve been tracking blood oxygen saturation, resting HR, and HR variability each day. Everyone’s response has been individual, but it looks like now everyone has made a good initial adaptation and we’re going to take on a bit of a harder training day.

There are three main goals of the training today, work in Z3 (below threshold, but above comfortable endurance pace) to contribute to a strong aerobic base, do some short stints of high power to stay in touch with high intensity so it’s not a shock to the system when athletes drop down to lower elevation, and do some gut training. Gut training? What I mean by that is taking in a high amount of carbohydrate in order to push the gut to improve it’s ability to transport carbohydrate into the blood. Carbohydrate is rocket fuel on the bike, and we want to be as good at using at as possible. There are limits to how much carbohydrate the gut can transport, but by taking in high amounts of carbohydrate in training we can push it to adapt to the point to where it can transport the maximum.

The workout for today is 3 x 20 minute efforts done on climbs, with the first 5 min done as a block of 20 seconds hard / 40 seconds easy and then transitioning straight into a 15 min block of zone 3 guided by heart rate. The 20/40 the riders will take by feel with the goal of pushing the power as high as they feel they can do repeatedly. So it’s a hard effort, but shouldn’t be a maximum sprint because in 40 seconds they’re doing it again. Having a work to rest ratio of 1:2 means they can really push the power and not be as limited by the altitude in the recovery period as they would in efforts like 30/30s or 40/20s. So since our goal is keeping the legs sharp with raw power a longish recovery time is great. Here’s a look at one set of these:

The athletes did 3 sets of the above effort today. It shaped up to be a big day! The overall picture of the ride is 4 hours 15 minutes, 112 km, 3150 m elevation gain, 3400 kJ, and 230 TSS. Since it was a big day of high burn, it was a perfect day for training the gut. Pushing the carb intake today helps not just for the future, but also to allow for best execution of the training, with the minimum deficit. I’m a big believer that minimizing the calorie deficit on the bike is the best way to recover well off the bike. Fueling off the bike matters to, but on the bike is where managing the stress can have a huge impact. Regarding the carb intake, it was pretty massive! It came out to 125 grams of carbohydrate per hour. That is 500 calories per hour just from carbohydrate! Here’s a bit more detailed report of the fuel and fluid intake. We’re also tracking fluid and electrolyte consumption as the upcoming races will be warm, and we want to have the hydration plan dialed!

That’s kind of the nuts and bolts of a day at altitude camp. The truth of it is that no one day is magical. It’s the sum of a bunch of mediocre days that end up making a big difference. It may sound a bit funny, but I always say that I’ve come to the conclusion that the mediocre days are the important ones. Mediocre days are repeatable, and repeatable days add up. I really feel it’s impossible to do any single day of training that’s so great that it makes a massive difference. The difference is made in good consistent work that’s just not that flashy. It’s nice to throw in a really big day, that looks super cool on paper, every now and then. But from my experience those days are usually more a confirmation of form than a build of form, it’s the consistent mediocre days that have been done prior to that day that really made the difference.

Thanks for reading!