UKH

At what height does altitude affect athletic performance to a significant extent if not acclimatised?

I am talking about top level athletes not 'punters' i.e. middle/long distance runners.

I remember once watching a 1500m race in Madrid (600m asl?) and the commentator said their would be an altitude effect, always seemed a little low to me to be impacting athletic performance.

In reply to Blunderbuss:

Probably, but certainly 3000ft is plenty..

It will only be a couple of % but at the elite level it makes a few second / mile..

In reply to Blunderbuss:

This sort of graph popped into my head. I'm not sure what population segment it applies to, but it is interesting.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fN60X7MNXZg/UCzGIcaL2pI/AAAAAAAAAp0/zqTpjRmLowg/s...

Was trying to find one like in Training for Alpinism that went up to 9000m but no luck.

In reply to Blunderbuss:

If you look at http://tinyurl.com/qgzt3ge

This shows the relationship between altitude and barometric pressure (1 atm at sea level is 101kpa or 760mmHg). At 1500m, you will see a 15-20% drop in atmospheric pressure and therefore partial pressure of oxygen. Note that the fraction of inspired O2 is 21% at all altitudes.

At some point above 1000m (by which point there is a c10% drop in barometric pressure), if exercising at close to VO2 max, you would expect there to arrive a point where it starts to become 'supply dependent.' The higher the intensity of exercise, the higher the requirement for oxygen and therefore the lower you notice the 'air being thin'. I have certainly noticed it after running a couple of hundred yards at 1900m.

In reply to needvert:

That's a really interesting graph. I went searching for the paper and it is here if anyone else is as interested (geeky) as I am:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16311764

In track cycling, altitude, to a certain level, helps. I forget the details, but it has a greater effect on reducing drag than on limiting performance.

In reply to Nick Harvey:

It also depends on the event, more anaerobic sports can be helping by lack of air resistance..

That figures - faster speeds with less need to keep aerobic.

Here is one study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8565981

In reply to Blunderbuss:

After push starting a small hatchback on behalf of some elderly Americans on the Nufenenpass this summmer, I can tell you that nearly 2500m of ascent makes a noticeable difference to the VO2 max of an averagely fit person. It felt like I was working on half a lung.

Cezza

In reply to Blunderbuss:

Annecdotally I found the 1000m point enough to make a noticeable difference.

Now that I've lived and trained at 1200m for 3 years I find a noticeable benefit when I fly down to a sea level city and go for a run.

In reply to Blunderbuss: there are a lot of variables and your state of fitness is the biggest. But for some years I went to Colorado to train and at 1800m took a whuppin' for the first couple of weeks.

I've raced 10k at 3000m and it wasn't easy

In reply to Blunderbuss:

In my 30s, about 15-20 years ago, I lived at 1000m for four years. I didn't do aerobic exercise much in that time, but found that I could walk quickly up to 2000-2500m or so without any discernible effects. Above 3000m and the altitude became really noticeable - shortness of breath, elevated heartbeat, and on overnight stays, nausae, headaches, constipation etc.

In reply to Blunderbuss:

2000m meters of gain is the usual 'noticable' height where the effects are pronounced. ANy height gain is going to effect oxygen levels in blood thus performance.