It's something of a rite of passage: every June, scores of well-heeled high school and college distance runners fill up their suitcases with nothing but running gear, somehow secure temporary shared housing, and flock to one of America's thin-aired summer training Meccas - your Flagstaffs, your Boulders, your Mammoth Lakeses - for a month or two of uninterrupted training.
If you yourself are reading this over an iced matcha and photo-worthy açai bowl someplace above 5,000 feet, good for you - you are living every distance runner's dream right now. Live it up, make new pals, train like an animal, try to feel your body churning out more and more red blood cells, then show up at the first day of fall cross country practice an entirely new athlete. (Oh, and be sure to post about it frequently across at least three social media platforms.)
But if you're on the outside looking in - via said frequent posts from friends/acquaintances/rivals who are yucking it up at altitude - don't fret. Yes, the benefits of altitude training are well-established and numerous, but so are the benefits of... well... training anywhere.
So while your summer threshold work - completed around a suburban subdivision of identical tract houses or along a bike path that snakes its way through office parks and vacant lots - may not be quite as photogenic as that of a peer who's doing the same session on a never-ending dirt road flanked by Boulder's Flatiron Mountains, the end result will ultimately be pretty similar. Some estimates put the performance-boosting benefits of altitude training to be about 1%.
Yes, being 1% fitter than somebody else can make a big difference in a race setting, but also, once you return to sea level, those benefits gradually taper off - a month or two later, they're mostly gone. As with all things training, it's more about the totality of the work you put in, rather than whether or not one factor was fully optimized.
But if things were as simple as "training at altitude means you'll be the best runner in the country," then the national champions at every distance event, from high school on up to the professionals, would all be permanently based in Flagstaff or Boulder. While residents of those towns do pretty well for themselves in terms of collecting hardware, they're also known training hubs, and attract highly motivated distance runners. Is it the altitude? That sure doesn't hurt. But it's more of a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Don't believe us?
Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Gainesville, Florida, was the hotbed of American distance running, and even produced the 1972 Olympic marathon gold medalist, Frank Shorter. (Two of Shorter's Florida Track Club teammates, Jeff Galloway and Jack Bacheler, also qualified to compete in the '72 Games.) Yes, Gainesville, the landlocked, hot, humid, mountain-less home of the University of Florida, which sits at an altitude of 171 feet above sea level, for a time was the premiere training destination for American distance runners.
Was that because training in the heat comes with its own unique set of performance-boosting benefits? Again, that probably didn't hurt! But we'd wager that the real reason for the Florida Track Club's impressive track record (sorry!) was its members collaborative approach to training - its members trained together constantly; no lone wolves - as well as their shared sense of dedication and purpose - it attracted athletes who wanted to move someplace where they could go all-in on becoming the best they could be.
And if there's anything you take away from this article, we hope it's that.
An extended altitude camp can be a lot of fun, and comes with the potential for very real gains. But more than the physiological benefits of altitude, it's about the mentality an athlete retreating up the mountain to dedicate themselves entirely to their craft. And that mentality can be harnessed anywhere on earth - even in the most mundane, muggy, buggy, sweltering stretch of asphalt you find yourself trotting along at mile 10 of your prescribed Sunday long run.
So next time you're partaking in a very specific type of doom-scrolling - the type where your feed is exclusively vibey slow motion video of people running on beautiful high-desert trails in northern Arizona's ponderosa pine forest - just remember that the point of summer training is to prepare for fall racing. And that the miles you're putting in at home, no matter where that is, are going to help you reach your cross country goals.
It's something of a rite of passage: every June, scores of well-heeled high school and college distance runners fill up their suitcases with nothing but running gear, somehow secure temporary shared housing, and flock to one of America's thin-aired summer training Meccas - your Flagstaffs, your Boulders, your Mammoth Lakeses - for a month or two of uninterrupted training.
If you yourself are reading this over an iced matcha and photo-worthy açai bowl someplace above 5,000 feet, good for you - you are living every distance runner's dream right now. Live it up, make new pals, train like an animal, try to feel your body churning out more and more red blood cells, then show up at the first day of fall cross country practice an entirely new athlete. (Oh, and be sure to post about it frequently across at least three social media platforms.)
But if you're on the outside looking in - via said frequent posts from friends/acquaintances/rivals who are yucking it up at altitude - don't fret. Yes, the benefits of altitude training are well-established and numerous, but so are the benefits of... well... training anywhere.