Is there a recommended way to handle a 3-4 week trip to altitude? I live at sea level most of the year, but make a couple of trips a year to Colorado. In TrainingPeaks/Strava/etc., I usually just knock the ftp value down 10%, and gradually increase it each week, but I’d love to use intervals.icu to estimate my ftp while I’m at altitude. Do I just need to tell it to ignore all rides from before the current trip, and if so, how? Ideally, it would take the gps info from the ride and recognize that I’m at altitude and evaluate the ride accordingly. Thanks!
1 Like
Thats an interesting idea. I found a couple of posts with tables for drop in FTP for altitude, acclimatised and not. I would need to look at historical data to know what your “home” altitude is to know how to adjust your entered FTP (up or down) when calculating intensity, load etc. for rides at other altitudes. This would give more accurate ride stats.
One issue is that altitude data from Strava I get for my rides (Garmin Edge 500) is sometimes inaccurate (negative values and I am a little above sea level). I think Strava fixes that using map data but thats not published in the data I get.
Using this info to tweak estimated FTP is also possible but tricky. Anyway its on the todo list now.
1 Like
1 Like
Whenever I wander into our mountain ranges here in Europe (Alps, Dolomites mainly - the Pyrenees hardly get over 2,000 m), I can feel the decrease in power, although it’s hard to measure with certainty.
Because I will start off at somewhere between 400 and 1,400 meters on average (last year’s first base camp was in Silvaplana at 1,800 m, but that was an exception), I do not really run in to oxygen trouble before I’m well on my way.
And by the time I do get over 2,000 - 2,200 meters, I’m already wearing out from the effort up to that point. However, I personally do not seem, or feel, to be affected by that - oxygen reduction - phenomenon a lot.
Obviously, I do not have the means - i.e money - to acclimatize for a few weeks, so I have learned to live with it. I have never adjusted any settings to correct for any of it, as first of all, I don’t know by how much, and secondly, it doesn’t matter much, as I’m not racing.
The fact that intensity is higher, compared to my ‘sea level’ FTP, doesn’t influence my performance as much as the strain of climbing for 20+ km being infinitely higher.
If I would intend to ‘race’ like a Marmotte, I could arrive a week or two before the event, but I’m guessing that wouldn’t help me much either. I just get there and ride the event at some point - I’d be better rested if I’d do it sooner, maybe a bit more adapted to the altitude if I would do it later, but I’d also be more tired.
Only time I’ve really noticed a difference is at high altitude. Here it paid to arrive a week early so I could walk up the stairs 
Colorado base at Breckenridge was 2950m with rides well above 3500m! Two weeks later it felt relatively normal.
1 Like
Thanks, all, for your thoughts and responses! Just to clarify one thing in case it wasn’t clear in my original question: I’m trying to figure out how to adjust my power zones so that I’m following my training plan “correctly”. My experience is that after about 3 weeks, things feel “normal” again, but I can’t quite tell how much the drop off is initially, and how quickly things improve. I was thinking that if I could “tell” the intervals.icu model that I am at altitude, it might be able to do a better job of estimating ftp (based on whatever intervals I’m doing as part of my training plan) this me randomly taking a % off when I arrive, and then adding a random amount back each week or so. Under that scenario, it might be just as simple for me to enter the altitude I’m at vs looking at previous rides, etc.
Thanks again!
There is data from surveys, there is data from your own previous experiences, which might enable @david to come up with some sort of implementation for this scenario. But to be able to then kinda ‘reverse engineer’ that back into your training plan…
Maybe try to use “Seasons”: start a new season on your fist day in CO and hopefully, it’ll show you the eFTP for that date range after a few days. I think you have to do an intense workout to trigger the calculation of eFTP so that might be rough when you are still getting adjusted to the altitude and maybe even jetlag.
From my experience with running/cycling between CA (sea level) and CO (Westminster/Boulder area altitude), it took me about two-three weeks to see “normal” values for hr, pace, & power.