I’ve always wondered if I could “microdose” altitude by setting a hypoxic generator to something crazy like 18k ft and wearing it while I sit at my desk and work. Don’t have to tank my sleep or workouts, but still accumulate time with lower O2 sat…
I tell people that training at sea level (I’m at 750’) and racing at altitude (I race at 7000 often) feels the same, just slower. It’s when you try to push more that you feel it.
Your brain knows you can normally produce more power, so you try to push harder. The people who live up there know what it feels like and can easily adjust.
But I do enjoy people thinking they suck at altitude and letting it impact them emotionally, I can pick them off easier 
In my opinion/experience this is incorrect and implies that perceived exertion works the same and can be relied on regardless of altitude. Altitude affects people differently, but my RPE at altitude goes through the roof when I’m above ~8500ft (not talking about at the same power, but for an altitude adjusted wattage). I do recalibrate after some time, but that recalibration is just accepting that it’s going to feel much harder for me at altitude but it’s sustainable. At sea level, I can push 280 for multiple hours and hold a conversation. At 10k feet, my altitude adjusted equivalent power is about 230w and elicits rapid heavy breathing, but I can still hold it for hours. If i went on RPE, I’d be noodling around under 200w and bleeding time.
And obviously racing at 7k feet is very different than racing at 9-13k. I see some power loss at 7k, but not that dramatic and I don’t have the same sensation of respiratory distress. Racing at 12k+ feels like the death zone to me, but I’ve learned to ride through the feeling and it’s fine.
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Has anyone tried (dry) sauna as a proxy for altitude? The sauna supposedly puts many of the same stresses on the body as going to altitude, and is likely to be more accessible to many.
I did in 2022 prior to SBT GRVL…can’t say it really helped. I think I had 6 or 7 sessions over the course of the two weeks leading up to the race. May have been more, can’t remember.
It was an IR Dry Sauna and I got up to about an hour in it and my core temp would eventually peak ~105*, usually about 15-20 minutes after I got out.
I wonder if this was part of the issue. The research I have read indicates that IR saunas don’t get hot enough, and that a Finnish (traditional) dry sauna is needed to get to the 175-185 degree (Fahrenheit) range.
While IR saunas don’t get as hot, it is a “different” type of heat and reportedly does not require to reach the same temperature levels.
At the end of the day, as long as you raise your core temp sufficiently, I don’t think it matters how hot the sauna gets.
But I’m certainly not an expert on the subject…would love to get more input.
ETA - a quick google search says that you want to get your core temp to around 102*, so I was well past that when I was doing the IR sauna.
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