Cross country running!

Think cold, wet and muddy winter runs through the parks and forests near school in your daps and PE kit. Well not up here at 1850 meters in Montgenevre (France), it is a crisp clear and sunny morning and me and the Viking (my new name for the 6ft 2in Nathan fitness god that I am boarding and skiing with for 2 weeks) have just completed a 40 minute run down into Claviere (Italy) 1750 meters and back up the hill on the snow to Montgenevre again.

There are several surreal things about this relatively short run, firstly we are in a Alpine ski resort and when you put your Lycra shorts and thermal vest to go running in 0 deg C in the snow when everyone else is in their ski gear, you get some very strange looks. Secondly, the first time we did the run (yes we did it twice!) we ran down the main road from MG and had to go through customs and passport control and we were concerned that if we got through we wouldn't be able to get back in as we didn't have passports with us, fortunately the boarder posts are un-guarded. Lastly and probably most interestingly is the effect that running at altitude has on your body.

When running at altitude, your blood becomes "thicker." That is, you have a higher concentration of red blood cells and hemoglobin. This seems to be a way of adapting to the lower levels of oxygen available to the lungs in the less dense air, I don't know the exact percentages but think I read somewhere it is a few percent lower than at sea level and is linked to the pressure/air density theory that it takes longer to boil an egg on a mountain. Essentially there are less air molecules in the air at altitude and so you can't turn oxygen into energy at the same rate at sea level and so to try and run at the same speed as you would do at home, your heart has to work that much harder - on the 40 minute run my heart rate averaged 165 beats per minute, the equivalent run in the UK I would be at 145 bpm. In fact at one point my heart rate was at 185 bpm, the highest I have ever had my heart rate and is what I thought was my maximum - I know know I can push harder!

On the other hand the Viking hardly broke a sweat and his heart rate maximum was 162 - fit bastard! To the fitness freak Viking this is exciting as he believes that this could result in greater than "normal" endurance when he returns to train at sea-level.

We'll try some more runs in Cervinia next week which is at 2000m.