Hi folks. I usually train at (or marginally above) sea level. I am going on holiday/vacation for 10 days in the French alps at 2000m/6050ft and have brought my trainer with me.
I’ve already established that this change in altitude on unacclimatised athletes is 6-10% depending on which study you look at.
Accordingly I reduced the intensity of my workout by 10% and then gradually increased it throughout the workout until I was at 6% reduction.
Because I had adjusted the intensity, at the end of the workout I was presented with the feedback survey as to why I’d ‘struggled’ (I’d actually felt pretty strong) and I selected ‘other’ and explained the situation. However this then made me realise it will have underestimated the TSS for that workout.
I then thought the best solution was to manually adjust my FTP for the period I am at altitude and leave the intensity at 100% but this then completely changed my whole training plan and progression levels.
So… I’m here… trying to find out what others have done in this situation and to see if TR might consider some kind of altitude setting that reduces the intensity of the workout but maintains your FTP and The corresponding TSS.
You’re in such a unique situation that it’s not worth it for TR to specifically address it. I would make the proper adjustments for each workout (ie: -6%) then answer the survey as if you didn’t fail. I’m not sure why you adjusted your FTP for 10 days of training. Your FTP didn’t change just your ability to express it. However, since AT changed your plan with this “new” FTP I’d look at past workouts’ PLs and use Alternates to match those. After a workout in that training zone AT will adapt your PLs to the level of the workout.
@MI-XC i adjusted my FTP as a rather crude effort to ensure the TSS applied to that workout appropriately reflected the effort/altitude. I didn’t realise it would mess up the whole plan and have subsequently reverted to my ‘correct’ FTP.
I’m now just ignoring the whole issue - doing workouts with an effective increase in intensity by 6% but it’s be great if the platform could use the location data from a users IP address and apply and altitude to a ramp test. If subsequent workouts have a different altitude then the TSS could be amended accordingly. I appreciate this will never be the top of their list in terms of demand but I think it should be on the list and addressed as and when they can.
I think there two issues at play here 1. How should you adjust your training at altitude and 2. How does TR adaptive training handle a trip to altitude.
I think #1 is easier to address - just reduce the intensity of your training like you have done. TSS will be off by a bit, but does that matter much? Leading to…
#2 totally depends on the algorithms TR has built into adaptive training. I don’t understand this well enough to have any meaningful ideas. If AT does not allow you to “zero out” the impact of a given workout, or takes into account low TSS to guide future workouts, then there could be an impact.
I have a related situation. I’m interested in folks thoughts on this. I live at 6000’, but as the summer rolls in I’ll be doing most of my workouts on a road climb that goes from 7k to 10.5k (that’s where the nice weather and good trail descents are). I’m a little concerned that this could somewhat compromise my adaptation, since my power targets will generally be harder to hold across the board. Should I try to do my workouts in a different spot because of this, or does it not matter too much?
In general there’s a benefit to doing your workouts as low as possible. Train low, live high would be ideal. That allows you to do more work, get better adaptations, etc.
With that said, if where you’ll race / ride is higher then just get out and enjoy those rides at Elevation. If you’re racing at Elevation, you’ll want to do enough riding at Elevation to know how you’ll react and how you have to modify your power targets.
Thanks for the help! My big goal events are Telluride 100 and Vapor Trail, both of which spend a good amount of time around 10k. For my workouts done at high elevation, would you reckon it’s better to adjust the target from the beginning, or attempt to achieve the unadjusted workout, adjusting on the fly if it becomes too hard?
You can’t just do an unadjusted workout when enough elevation comes into play. For me when I go from Sea Level to Leadville this summer, I’m going to need to adjust my FTP from 320 to 256 ish.
A starting point for going from 6000 → 10,000 will be to first divide your FTP by 0.89 then multiply by 0.8 effectively reducing it for the altitude. (10K ftp works out to ~90% of your 6K ftp)
