Running at altitude

Do you still exit the house with a hat and gloves on morning runs?  I do.  We are still in the throes of winter.  This perhaps means some of you lucky folk have yet to cash in that winter ski vacation.  And for perhaps even the luckier maybe you’re headed out west to enjoy big mountain, powder, high altitude skiing.  I thought of you when borrowing space from Greg Decent’s weekly Running Column in the Vail Daily and guest-penned a brief article on running at altitude.  Basically, I offer a few suggestions (from my own experiences) on how to make the most of your runs while doing battle with oxygen debt.  It was published last week in the Vail Daily.  Follow this link to read it.

Much has been written on the widely studied practice of endurance training and racing at altitude.  It is a fascinating topic, to say the least, and one of which I am no expert.  Because I am a lowlander from Washington D.C. running while at altitude mostly means seducing the beast; I simply try to find a comfortable rhythm while my lungs search for oxygen as I plod along in the thin air.  Other than the few simple suggestions I offer in the column what additional recommendations can any of you offer to a runner from sea level hoping to get in some decent runs while vacationing at altitude?  What practices do you employ?  I am interested to know.

By the way, how killer is it that the Vail Daily publishes a weekly running column?  Only in an active town like Vail…  As much as I love reading the Washington Post each morning the editors would never think to offer such pleasure to a reader like me.  Note to the Washington Post editors: skip the regular Metro Section traffic report column once in a while and publish something original like hyper-local, motivating, educational information on fun topics, such as running, for the ga-zillion runners in the D.C. region that populate our streets and trails.