Altitude Training From Australia: My Experiment
Australian trails and mountains are special. The animals, plants, landscapes and variety we have make for an experience you can’t get anywhere else in the world. But what we do lack easy access to is altitude. As someone that tries to compete with the best in the world at altitudes sometimes twice as high as the highest point on our country, altitude adaptation has been a sticking point in my training and travel schedule. I am a born and bred ocean-side dweller, and I will never forget the shock to the system my first race above 2000m without acclimatisation was. It sucked to feel like I was so fit and had trained so well, but nothing I could have done from home could have prepared me to actually use that fitness at altitude unless I had travelled way earlier than I did.
The way I have approached this problem so far is that I have two options - travel at least 3-4 weeks early if a goal race is at altitude so I have time to adapt and get all the benefits of living at altitude for a while; or find a way to get at least some of the benefits and adaptation from sea level in Melbourne. Before world champs in 2018 I did a couple of months of three runs a week in an altitude chamber at a gym, but also travelled to altitude 2 weeks early, and that worked somewhat decently but was not convenient or affordable long term. I used a similar routine before world champs 2019, but since then I have only opted for rolling the dice with getting as fit as I can (great in theory but in practice it SUCKED), extending my already long trips, or making sure everywhere I stayed was at altitude.
Because of the costs and time, I am forever trying to improve my ability to spend time at home around those I love while chasing big dreams. So when I got injured this year I used it as an opportunity to experiment with having an altitude generator at home thanks to High Altitude Training Australia. It has by no means a perfect experiment, with travel, life, and illness at times getting in the way. But despite that I have been excited by both the objective blood test results I have gotten, plus the subjective feel of my perception of effort at generated-altitude.
I broke my ‘experiment’ into three parts so far. Part 1 involved only passive altitude exposure (seated watching TV). Part 2 was passive + 3-4 x active sessions per week (on the bike trainer). Part 3 was only active exposure on the bike trainer anywhere from 3-5 times per week.
The exact machine I used is the OLV-10T Hypoxic generator that can be found here. These machines do not simulate the changes in barometric pressure found at altitude, they merely change the percentage of oxygen in the air that you breath in through the mask. So they achieve the lowering of your oxygen saturation in a different way to true altitude and as such will never elicit all the benefits, but it is the closest you can get at sea level without being in a vacuum sealed container.
Here is an image of all my blood tests collated, and a rundown of the protocols I used + my thoughts:
Part 1
Protocol: 1 hour per day of 5 mins mask on aiming for 70-80% Oxygen saturation (~5000m altitude), 5 mins mask off breathing normal air.
Blood Test Results: I used a random blood test I had in January as baseline, and then had my first blood test four weeks into the passive protocol. As expected, this is where I saw the biggest jump in numbers of Haemoglobin (Hb) and Mean Cell Haemoglobin Content (MCHC), as pictured below from test 1 to test 2 (may be skewed by not testing immediately before - again, imperfect experimentation here!).
My Thoughts: I felt the breathing at high altitude getting easier and easier, and also noticed that I was able to let my Oxygen saturation drop much lower without feeling any discomfort. I couldn’t observe any effects on my training fitness due to not running yet. Both the upside and the downside is that on quieter days, doing the passive protocol was a great chance to take a break in the middle or end of the day and put my feet up for an hour, but when life got busy I found keeping up the protocol daily annoying or stressful.
Part 2
Protocol: As above, plus 3-4 x a week of 20-40mins active on the bike trainer. On the bike I always did 10-20min warm up, 20-40mins at oxygen sats 80-85% and HR ~70-80% max, then cool down.
Blood Test Results: As pictured below, my HB and most other parameters held steady, with a mild increase in MCHC. There was one stint of 6 days of travel in this time.
My Thoughts: At the start , getting down the desired oxygen saturations required only 2000m altitude, with anything above that feeling way too hard with me ripping the mask off. But by the end, I was holding the same oxygen sats at ~3800m altitude, and feeling much more comfortable breathing with a higher heart rate even at that altitude.
Part 3
Protocol: Active altitude exposure only, on the bike trainer still, with 3-5 sessions/week.
Blood Test Results: Overall holding steady at originally elevated levels, but mild drop in Hb and MCHC. There was one week of travel in this time.
My Thoughts: Feeling the continued improvements week on week with my comfort level breathing while active at higher altitudes was great during this time, and overall this was my favourite and the easiest protocol to uphold around other life/training as it wasn’t every day and didn’t use up any extra time that I wouldn’t have been training anyway.
Point of Interest - Post Flu Blood Test
Just a bit of an added piece of info I got was that although I continued the active-only protocol through august, just before travelling to Europe I got the flu. Proper week-in-bed-feeling-like-death kinda flu. I didn’t use the machine at all during this time or for a little bit after while I recovered, and obviously trained less too. My last blood test pictured was from just after this, and has a significant drop in Hb, although MCHC remains high.
Actual Effects on Perception/Performance at Altitude
A proper test of how this affects my performance at altitude will have to wait for another time, as due to my injury I am only doing one race overseas and it maxes out at 1500m, which is not high enough to test any real effects. What I have been able to notice though is changes in how I usually feel in the initial weeks of coming to Europe from Aus to train. Only a couple of days off the plane I did a long uphill run maxing out at 1700m and did not notice the altitude at all. Although it was an easy effort and not that high, in the past I would have expected some mild sensations of breathlessness or fatigue beyond what I would feel in Aus. Then about a week after arriving I did a track session in Chamonix at ~1050m and surprised myself, running times equivalent to what I would have aimed for at home and much faster than my first session in Chamonix last time I was here. Beyond that I have been to Aiguille du Midi at 3800m and did not get any of the fatigue or headaches I got last time, and my long runs up to ~2500m have all felt better than the beginning of my previous trips here, although still harder than lower altitudes. Placebo or real, I do feel better coming to altitude this time, but as I said, can’t test that out with any high altitude races this year so who knows how much of a benefit it has had to my ability to perform in races at 2000m+.
Closing Thoughts
Moving forward, I have really enjoyed the process and found this the most convenient long term solution to getting some altitude adaptations in Melbourne. I plan to continue using the machine from High Altitude Training Australia and continue testing it out, next with sleeping under a canopy. My current overall thoughts are that year-round I would like to include some of the active sessions per week, say 3-4x30mins/wk in the off season, as the passive sessions are less convenient for my lifestyle. Then in the 8 weeks before an event at altitude or before coming to Europe, I would ramp that up with some daily passive exposure or sleeping under a canopy at night.
It is such a relief to have some form of a solution to the altitude conundrum - of course it’s still never as good as actual altitude, and I will still need to travel to places early to acclimatise fully. But if the generator helps me make those acclimatisation periods shorter, maintain some fitness adaptations year-round, or at times perform better in races at moderate altitude not long off the plane, then I will be one happy Aussie trail runner.
Massive thanks again to High Altitude Training Australia for making this experiment possible for me. If you are ever looking into this kind of training for running or hiking or just general adventuring to altitude safely, then the owner Con is a wealth of knowledge and can guide you though the whole process.