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DEALING WITH EXTREME ALTITUDE - COLOMBIA EDITION

with Dealing With Extreme Altitude

14:26·19 January 2021

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DEALING WITH EXTREME ALTITUDE

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

At 3,000 metres you lose roughly 20% of your VO2 max — plan your power targets and expectations accordingly.
Arrive at altitude in the best shape you can; a higher VO2 max means the performance drop hits you less hard.
Losing body weight before an altitude trip gives you a double benefit: you climb faster and acclimatise more easily.
Ride by perceived exertion when you first arrive, not power targets — your normal numbers will mislead you badly.
Training high and sleeping high is the hardest combination; add altitude stress on top of a training overload block and you risk falling apart completely.

One of the the aspects of Colombia which struck me hardest was the extreme altitude. Alto De letras topped out at over 4000 meters. Today I talk about how I coped at extreme altitude

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KEY QUOTES

“At 3000 meters we're losing almost 20% of our max VO2 capacity. So you're losing a shit on your capacity at 3000 meters 20% of your capacity gone. That's massive. To put this into real world terms if you're a racer, that's the difference between a cat 4 and a cat 1.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

“Altitude seems to have a diminishing marginal effect on people of higher VO2 max levels. So the higher VO2 max you have the less profound impact it has on you. So if you go over in shocking shape hoping to royge your way into a camp it's likely you're going to get weaker and weaker.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

“I actually slept in an altitude tent for a long time probably a year year and a half that I was full-time, had it set up on my apartment and slept most nights at 2,800 meters. My overview macro protocol was I was sleeping high and training low.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT4 SECTIONS

Colombia trip recap and intro

Today I want to talk about the effect of altitude on performance. Let's cue that intro! The big question is this, how do we use cycling as a tool to improve our health, our happiness and our long-chevages? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answers. My name is Anthony Welch and welcome to the Roadman Podcast. Well, man, welcome back to another Roadman Cycling Podcast. I'm speaking to you from a very, very jet-lagged Dublin. I made it back from Medellin. It's a long trip back, but let me tell you, Columbia was definitely worth the travel. For me, coming back, I went from flu from Medellin to Bogota, which is a short flight, actually a crazy long drive. It's about a 45-50 minute flight. I think it's like a 7 or 8-hour drive because you're over mountains and it's yeah it's a crazy drive. Anyway from Bogota flew to Cartagena, stopped there for a hour. Then we went on from Cartagena to Amsterdam and then from Amsterdam finally to Dublin. So it was definitely one of those as we say around the house's trips but made a hum, covid test before I left and I'm back in Dublin now and another covid test and that's me wrapping up. I suppose that bookends the Colombian adventure once I get the result of that but yeah it was some trip folks and one of the things that definitely struck me when I was over there and that's the focus for today's podcast. It was the altitude, it was something that I obviously knew about going out but it's a long time since I've been an altitude so it knocked me back a bit So I want to talk to you about a few learnings from writing an altitude and some of the ways you can prepare yourself if you're heading off to an altitude destination this year. Before I jump into all that, let me just remind you about Patreon because Patreon is how I fund the podcast. Patreon is how we're going to expand this year. Plenty of big plans for 2021 and most of you listening and choose to give a little something each month to Netflix, to Amazon, to Spotify, to these various services. And really they don't need your money, they're big, big companies. And you know, in our likelihood, you haven't logged into a lot of these platforms for a long, long time, but yet you continue to donate to them. Well, what I'm asking is you do the same, but it's different because when you donate to Amazon, to Jeff Bezos, it doesn't put a smile on his face, but I tell you every time I get a Patreon, every time someone buys me that virtual point of beer save tanks for the podcast, it really makes a difference and it really puts a smile on my face. So thank you for everyone who subscribed to the podcast. Today you've made the podcast get this far and to those who haven't signed up yet, it's over on www.patreon.com forward slash Anthony underscore watch the link is in the bio for that. Go on stick a smile on my face. It's always depressing after a holiday so it's nice to have something to smile about. Okay, so I suppose the first time I ever thought about altitude was I remember going to up to Wes and the first night we slept we actually didn't stay in up to Wes we went to ride up to Wes and I was in college but we stayed in late does out because we were bomb students and accommodation was a lot cheaper so we stayed in this does out which is a similar altitude to up to Wes and it's around 2,000 meters. One of the guys that was with me he got a nosebleed on the first night and that was Not the first time I ever taught about altitude, I ever seen its effect. I remember in this, those out for two weeks I was over there. Every night just having super, super bad sleeps. This was in an age before sleep trackers and you could quantify and put data and numbers on it.

How altitude crushes VO2 max

But we still had feelings. That's what a lot of people are forgetting now with sleep trackers. You can still tell. I can still wake up in the morning and say I feel refreshed. I had a good sleep without looking at metrics. I knew I was sleeping bad over there. That was the first time I was in my mind and then I experienced it a bunch of times since some accidental and some deliberate like heading off to Tenarife and riding up the side of Mount Taetah. But I told the Lettras the longest climb in the world which I rode was something else because that gets up to over 4,400 meters. And even where I based myself for a good chunk of the trip was Medellin and you're routinely above 2,000 meters in Medellin. Like Medellin is pretty much like a ball if you can imagine and the city is in the base of the ball and then in the evening everyone heads out of this little base of the ball back to the hills and that's where most people live and that's where you do most of your training and you're routinely both that sort of 2000 meter mark and what you're really asking is you're asking your body to adapt because every breath that you take contains less oxygen so you're training and you're trying to make a training adoption but your body's also trying to make an oxygen adoption that's not used to at sea level. People that head to these destinations, they routinely experience irritability, headaches, poor sleep and then extremes like my buddy nose blades. When we're at sea level, VO2 Max is really the indicator we use for that maximum oxygen uptake and you've heard people talking about it before and it's one of the predictors like we heard Greg Lemon at a crazy VO2 Max in the 90s and elite athletes typically have a VO2 Max of over 70 VO2 max is that maximum oxygen uptake but as 3000 meters we're losing almost 20% of our max VO2 capacity. So you're losing a shit on your capacity at 3000 meters 20% of your capacity gone. That's massive. That's the difference. To put this into real world terms if you're a racer, that's the difference between a cat 4 and a cat 1. So if you're a cat 1 racer going away to altitude be prepared to be a car for a racer because it is going to knock you from the knees. It's going to chop you in pieces when you get there. Can you beat altitude? That's the question that I was thinking, as soon as I went up, let's just go on shit, I should have prepared better for this. And I started thinking, can you beat altitude? And if you're heading away and you're doing a whole-root event or you're doing any of the one-two sport teams or maybe you're heading over to Electras, we should definitely do Electras challenge. We'll talk about it. But if you're heading over to any of these events, one of the things you can definitely do is prepare what you're training. Now, I know do you want to be prepared what you're training? But for real, this makes a big difference. So going over fit versus going over our own fit, it obviously has the difference that you would assume. You're better gone in better shape. But the real difference in why this helps you beat altitudes is altitude seems to have a diminishing marginal effect on people of higher VO2 max levels. So the higher VO2 max you have the less profound impact it has on you. So if you go over in shocking shape hoping to royge your way into a camp it's likely you're going to get weaker and weaker. If you go over in top-top shape it's likely you're going to adapt faster than your peers. So and especially if it's, you know, there's, I suppose there's two types of altitudes, you could be at altitude, like in Colorado, but still sort of the un-jolating roads and then there's altitude where you're actually ascending every day like Lettraster, like Mountoida.

Live high, train low protocols

Weight has an absolutely monumental effect on your ability to assimilate to altitude. We know weight has a crazy effect anyway going uphill. Like if you take two pounds off a rider, he's going to go up a 10 kilometer climb one minute faster. think about the effect of that on an 80 kilometer climb and I'm not even going to try and do the maths on that one but it adds up to a shit ton of time. So you simulate better to altitude with less weight and you have that double whammy compounding effect of going up the hills faster. Now previously when I was racing full time I had played around with altitude exposure and altitude exposure comes in two variants. So you've real altitude exposure like you actually go and stay at the top of Mount Taeta or top of all of the Lettras and then you have simulated exposure. So I actually slept in an altitude tent for a long time probably probably a year year and a half that I was full-time, looked at round, had it set up on my apartment and slept most nights at 2,800 meters. So that is roughly sort of the top of some of the climbs like a tea drowel in Medellin is about 2,800 meters. Now you're You suppose you have two protocols and I'm not going to dive into them at depth because somebody will take the headline and they'll run with it because it's a lot more nuanced where you need to be using pulse oxometers, check in your hemocrit levels, check in your red blood cell accounts. But 2,800 meters was where I was sleeping and my overview macro protocol was I was sleeping high and training low. So this means I was sleeping at altitude at 2,800 meters and then I was training at sea level in Dublin, Ireland. That's one way you can do it. the other way is, you sleep, sorry, the other way is the opposite. You train high and you sleep low. So you will train at the top of all of the left-rass, Mountedah, etc. and then you come back down to Dublin altitude, which is sea level, or as close as possible to sleep. So you can train low, sleep high or sleep high, train low. There are the two protocols and that's why you need to be especially careful when you go to somewhere like Columbia because you're training high and you're sleeping high. And that's a double whammy. And that puts an extra stress on your body and it requires it to make an extra adaptation. So you need to be really, really careful because go on to somewhere like Columbia and roiding every single day or going there with the idea to do a super compensation or an overload block. You're adding in the overload stimulus and training and you're asking your body to take that extra stimulus from the altitude. You've got to be really, really careful with that. I've seen so many athletes go into these altitude camps where they live high, train high, and they're looking to really push on that fitness and it ends up bringing the wheels off completely. I'm trying to explain what it feels like at the top of all total let-ras. It's almost like you've a constricted air wave, like someone's choking you out, like you're dying to get that extra oxygen in but you're breathing through a straw. Really, really difficult to get any, like anything out of the air. It's almost like, it's like you're breathing with your head inside a plastic bag or you're breathing with your head underwater and you're just, it's fucking difficult to explain but I tell you, it's even more difficult to actually breathe that air when you're riding that any sort of intensity and a power meter will get you into all sorts of troubles. If you're looking at your power meter and going, yeah, I can hold 300 watts for five hours and then you try and do it at altitude without factoring in that reduction that we spoke about, You're gonna be in a bad, bad spot.

Setting realistic altitude expectations

Haven't said all that because that was all quite doomy and gloomy. I wouldn't let any of this deter you right in your altitude. It's a very safe thing to do and it's a very, very fast way to improve your fitness and lose weight. You just need to go out to altitude and moderate your goals. So don't go out to altitude and think, I'm gonna hit a 20 minute PB on my power meter. I'm gonna go for this travel record. go out to altitude, write off perceived exertion a little way till your body adjusts, and then your coach can look at it and say, okay, let's have a look. This threshold interval, we're gonna peel this back 20 watts. Now that's a realistic target. But there's no universal recommendation that I can say to you. And if your coach says so, he's lying, you can't go out and say, okay, your threshold's 340, let's write a 3.10 and that's gonna be perfect. Everybody assimilates the altitude differently. I've been out on altitude training camps with friends and they take to it like a duck to water, they're fine, absolutely no adverse effect. And others, they're on their hands and knees. Look, the altitude absolutely didn't attract at all for me on an altered electros or any deodorant climbs. I just rolled back a little bit and, you know, who knows with COVID, what's happening with the season here at the moment? So I didn't really have any expectations for my trip in Columbia. It wasn't a training camp, per se. I was just going out riding my bike, being a little bit of a cycling tourist, pulling out the camera at times. I even made a video going up all the left-rass. So when I beat the jet lag and I get my bike built from the bike box, I will stick my head down and start editing that video this week. So I'll get it out to you on YouTube. Roman, I hope that gives you a little bit of food for Todd. And if you're thinking about your next cyclone destination, I would definitely consider you to think about altitude. And I would definitely, definitely, highly encourage you to think about Columbia because it was a mind-blowing experience. I'm gonna elaborate on it more in upcoming podcasts because I've loads more Columbia material coming for the next few days but Robemen thank you for listening it's good to be back in Dublin and I'm gonna chat you again tomorrow. Before you go anywhere, our first ever romance summit aired back in December. I brought together 30 experts and they shared with me their secrets on how to boil hack your physiology, how to melt away body fat and smash your cycling goals, whatever that was. Since airing that back in December, I've just been in on days of my Instagram DMs, Twitter direct messages with requests to get access to this material. I had it locked up in the vault, but I've decided to open access to this material for you, the podcast listeners at the Roadman Podcast. So to get access to this, it's a one-time payment of 47 euro and you're going to have all the interviews, all those secrets forever. You're gonna have the videos and the MP-Trees. In there I've got interviews, world-tore mechanics, nutritionists, sports psychologists, bike-fit experts and some of the legends at the sport like Tyler Hamilton and Pete Sten. Over 30 hours of content in this members area that I've created for you guys. So if you want to get access to that, the way to do it is to head on over to this URL www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. I'll give you that again. It's www.roadmansomit.com forward slash 2021. That's numerical. The link to that is in the bio. Get it, check it out, learn it, take it in, because this is sure to set you on the right path for 2021.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How much does high altitude affect cycling performance?+

At 3,000 metres, cyclists lose roughly 20 percent of their VO2 max capacity. Anthony Walsh notes on the podcast that this loss is comparable to the performance gap between a Category 1 and a Category 4 racer, making altitude one of the most significant external factors affecting output on climbs like Alto de Letras.

How do you prepare for cycling at extreme altitude?+

Arrive in the best possible physical condition and reduce body weight before travelling. Anthony Walsh argues that fitter, lighter riders acclimatize faster because altitude has a smaller marginal effect on athletes with a higher baseline VO2 max, so pre-trip fitness is the most controllable variable.

How long is Alto de Letras in Colombia?+

Alto de Letras is widely regarded as the longest road climb in the world, topping out at over 4,400 metres. Anthony Walsh rode it during his Colombia trip and describes the altitude as one of the most challenging aspects of the entire experience.

Does being fitter help you cope better with altitude on a bike?+

Yes, and the relationship is directly linked to VO2 max. Because altitude causes a percentage-based reduction in aerobic capacity, a rider with a higher VO2 max loses more absolute watts but retains a larger total reserve than a less fit rider, meaning the performance penalty is proportionally less damaging at the top end of fitness.

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KEY QUOTES

“At 3000 meters we're losing almost 20% of our max VO2 capacity. So you're losing a shit on your capacity at 3000 meters 20% of your capacity gone. That's massive. To put this into real world terms if you're a racer, that's the difference between a cat 4 and a cat 1.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

“Altitude seems to have a diminishing marginal effect on people of higher VO2 max levels. So the higher VO2 max you have the less profound impact it has on you. So if you go over in shocking shape hoping to royge your way into a camp it's likely you're going to get weaker and weaker.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

“I actually slept in an altitude tent for a long time probably a year year and a half that I was full-time, had it set up on my apartment and slept most nights at 2,800 meters. My overview macro protocol was I was sleeping high and training low.”
Anthony Walsh — Roadman Cycling podcast host, former full-time racer

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How much does high altitude affect cycling performance?+

How do you prepare for cycling at extreme altitude?+

How long is Alto de Letras in Colombia?+

Does being fitter help you cope better with altitude on a bike?+

DEALING WITH EXTREME ALTITUDE - COLOMBIA EDITION

KEY QUOTES

Colombia trip recap and intro

How altitude crushes VO2 max

Live high, train low protocols

Setting realistic altitude expectations

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

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LIKED THIS EPISODE?

DEALING WITH EXTREME ALTITUDE - COLOMBIA EDITION

KEY QUOTES

Colombia trip recap and intro

How altitude crushes VO2 max

Live high, train low protocols

Setting realistic altitude expectations

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

NEVER MISS AN EPISODE

READ THE GUIDE

RELATED EPISODES

EXTREME OWNERSHIP TO IMPROVE CYCLING PERFORMANCE

TOMAS MOLINA - COLOMBIA BY BIKE

RIDING THE WORLD'S LONGEST CLIMB | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

RELATED CONTENT

EXTREME OWNERSHIP TO IMPROVE CYCLING PERFORMANCE

TOMAS MOLINA - COLOMBIA BY BIKE

RIDING THE WORLD'S LONGEST CLIMB | ROADMAN CYCLING PODCAST

LIKED THIS EPISODE?