I live near sea level, but I go into high altitude quite frequently (roughly 7300 feet) many weekends all winter long to ski and quite often in the summer for MTBing.
Unfortunately I am typically in and out of the high elevation in 2-3 days, and I think this lifestyle is actually a detriment to my training quality. Forget the travel stress that adds up, but the quality of training due to never being able to actually aclimatize limits the intensity of workouts.
I’ve decided the best way to combat this high altitude training in the winter is to due all my high intensity training at sea level, and then work in sweet spot or endurance intensity at high elevation. If I have a threshold workout scheduled, and I have already done all high intensity throughout the week, I lower the intensity to sweet spot (even though 14% below threshold is probably still threshold I lower it to a level that feels like sweet spot). I don’t think I am going to get the training adaptation of a wattage that is below sweet spot at sea level but feels like threshold at high elevation, so I just lower to sweet spot because the training adaptation I’m guessing is not much different, and I don’t burn mental matches on something that feels like threshold but I’m not getting threshold training adaptation from.
In the summer, I usually do long mountain bike rides for fun and for hours in the saddle, so I plan on using the same protocol of intensity during the week, but maybe I should dial back my mountain bike ride intensity (easier said than done on technical climbs at times) and just use them as long endurance rides to maximize my training stress.
Any thoughts on this, and if there are better ways to optimize my training plan? I’m afraid there’s no way around my lifestyle (cry me a river I know) and will have to deal with slightly suboptimal training plan.
