My Track Record

My friend Henry Wigglesworth said the following in a recent email:

I just got back from New Mexico, where I had a disappointing race at the La Luz Trail Run. I was 90 seconds slower that last year, which is not a lot (1:43:03 vs. 1:41:33), but I frankly thought I was in a little better shape. Also, after the race this year, I felt like crap for about two hours. The main difference I can point to is that this year, I only had 18 hours to get used to the elevation change whereas last year (and the year before when I ran 1:36), I had 4 days. I know that the conventional wisdom is that it takes about 2-3 weeks to acclimate, and if you don't have that amount of time (i.e., you have a job), then the best thing is to arrive the day before a race. But in my case, that did not seem to be true. I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic, since I know (along with the many well-intentioned volunteers at Western States) that you have a Ph.D. in physiology.

Henry, the conventional wisdom is not especially wise in this case. A close inspection of the relevant data suggests a very simple rule: the more acclimation time, the better. Yes, two to three weeks of preparation at altitude can be very helpful (and four to eight weeks is even better), but if you can't get out to the race site weeks in advance, four days of acclimation is probably better than one.

The questionable "arrive right before the race" advice arose from an interesting observation made back in the 1960s by David Dill and his colleagues. Dill et al. found that, if someone was put in a low-oxygen chamber and immediately subjected to a VO2max test on a bicycle ergometer, he or she performed better than if transported to high altitude (with oxygen levels equivalent to those in the chamber) and given the same VO2max test after a couple of days there (Journal of Applied Physiology 21: 1168, 1966; Journal of Applied Physiology 23: 555, 1967; JAMA 205: 747, 1968).

Dill concluded that a gradual decline in exercise capacity takes place during the first two to three days of residence at altitude. This conclusion led to the recommendation that athletes should arrive at a high-altitude race shortly before it starts -- that is, before the body suffers through its two- to three-day decline.

Dill never proved that performance is worse after two days at altitude than after, say, a few hours. However, his assumption of a gradual multi-day decline went largely unchallenged until a 2001 report by Adele Weston and coworkers (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise 33: 298, 2001). The subjects of this study performed various exercise tests 6, 18, and 47 hours after reaching an altitude of 5600 feet; they did significantly better after 18 or 47 hours than after 6 hours. A subsequent study (Burtscher et al., International Journal of Sports Medicine 27: 629, 2006) found that cyclists fared better in a 50-minute time trial at 10,500 feet when they had 45 hours of exposure to high altitude, rather than two hours.

Do these two papers give us the final, infallible word on high-altitude racing? No, of course not. But they do suggest that endurance performance bottoms out within the first few hours of arrival at altitude and then improves steadily after that. In other words, the more pre-race time you are able to log at altitude, the more success you are likely to have.

Better luck next year, Henry!

Posted by crowther at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

This blog is now receiving about 150 "spam comments" per day, most containing links to websites about sex, drugs, gambling, and ringtones. Since I'm totally against all of these things, as well as freedom of speech, I've changed my settings so that comments are now subject to moderator approval -- the moderator being me, of course. My apologies to anyone adversely affected by this new policy.

Speaking of online hedonism, I spent part of yesterday afternoon using the web to follow three sports events simultaneously: the Mariners' game, the men's marathon at the World Track and Field Championships, and the Ultra Trail Tour du Mont Blanc. Results: a 4-2 win for the M's, a very respectable 37th-place showing by Seattle's Uli Steidl . . . and a triumph for 58-year-old Marco Olmo of Italy over some of the best trail ultramarathoners in the world, including Scott Jurek, Karl Meltzer, and Hal Koerner. This has to be one of the greatest age-graded ultramarathon performances of all time -- just slightly ahead of Olmo's win at this venue last year, when he was only 57. Also impressive, but perhaps less surprising, was Nikki Kimball's domination of the women's field. In her four five attempts at the 100-mile distance, Kimball now has three victories at Western States, one at Leadville, and one at Mont Blanc. Not bad.

Posted by crowther at 3:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

As of two weeks ago, Phil had a crawling range of about one foot in any direction. Since then he's made remarkable progress. Tonight he was sitting in the kitchen when my wife told him to come to bathroom, where she was waiting to give him a bath. So he did!

His crawling form has been described as "commando-style," meaning that he lies flat on his belly and propels himself forward mostly with his arms. He could be really sneaky if it weren't for the wild kicking, heavy breathing, babbling, giggling, and drooling.

My wife has also made good locomotive progress over the past fortnight; she's run post-partum personal records (PPPRs) of 19:00 for 5K and 40:43 for 10K.

I'm proud of them both.

Posted by crowther at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Four weeks 'til the World Cup 100K in Winschoten (the Netherlands). Today was my "dress rehearsal," i.e., a long run (13 laps around Green Lake, or 36.4 miles) at something resembling race pace.

Most of my recent workouts have indicated that I'm in worse shape than I was during the winter and early spring. Today was the definitive test of this. The answer I got was: yes, I truly am out of shape.

A few months ago, I probably could have averaged 6:10 per mile for 35-40 solo miles over flat roads. Today, short of running myself into the ground, all I could manage were 6:20s.

What this means for Winschoten is that I must purge all grandiose ambitions from my mind. At the start of the year, I had thought that Tom Johnson's American record of 6:30:11 (set in Winschoten in 1995) might be within my reach on a perfect day. Nope. My new plan is to run the first 50K at 6:25/mile pace, then hang onto 6:35/mile pace during the second 50K. That will bring me to the finish in just under 6 hours and 45 minutes, and that will have to suffice.

Posted by crowther at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My boss, an MD/PhD, was about to say something when he suddenly forgot what it was. "Sorry," he said. "Brain infarct."

My first reaction was to giggle at this phrase, which sounded to me like a physician/scientist's clever evasion of the term "brain fart" in favor of something less vulgar. But then I realized that, in the context of forgetfulness, "brain infarct" (brain damage caused by a loss of blood flow) actually makes a lot more sense than "brain fart" (which is . . . what, exactly?). Although I had initially assumed that the former excuse was inspired by the latter, maybe the opposite is true. Maybe people used to say "brain infarct" (or "brain farct") all the time until somebody misheard it and started spreading the flatulence around.

So which came first, the infarct or the fart? Right now my money is on "infarct."

Posted by crowther at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

From a running standpoint, this past month was fairly demoralizing. I suppose my problems can be attributed to lingering fatigue from Western States, which hasn't made them any less irritating, but I've tried to remain patient. Some highlights and lowlights from my training log:

7/11: "Urban jungle time trial" (with backpack, on the way home from work) from Capitol Hill (East Roanoke Street & 10th Avenue East) to Beacon Hill (14th Avenue South & 15th Avenue South) in my slowest time ever (22:36), presumably because of the 95-degree heat.

7/14: 2 x 3200m with 600m jog in between. Times: 10:22, 10:41. A fine workout ... if I were STILL A FRESHMAN IN COLLEGE. This is my current fitness level? Perhaps I should rethink my scheduled participation in the World Cup 100K on September 8th.

7/17: Displaying limited patience, tried the same workout I did three days ago. Improved from "unbelievably disastrous" to "really horrible" (10:16, 10:23).

7/20: 20 miles (8 laps) at Seward Park at what must now be considered "wildly, irrationally optimistic 100K race pace" (6:15 per mile). Wanted to do 25 miles at this pace but was working really hard toward the end and stopped early in hopes of avoiding major muscle damage.

7/23: Tempo run (with backpack, on the way home from work) along Lake Washington from Denny Blaine Park to South Orcas Street in 31:56. The good news: this was only 3 seconds slower than my time from six months ago, when I was very fit. The bad news: I became nauseated shortly after the run and remained so for the next two days. A case of food poisoning? Or am I so out of shape now that running fast makes me physically ill?

7/27: Ran a hard (but not all-out) mile in 5:14 around the Montlake Fill on the UW campus. A decent time, actually, for this particular loop. Some cautious optimism may be warranted.

7/28: Swept the first 28 miles of the White River 50 course. Fell 3 times. As if I needed further evidence that I'm not much of a trail runner....

7/31: Same workout as on 7/11, only this time in a new record of 20:57. Hallelujah! I'm looking forward to August.

Posted by crowther at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)