Mountain running

I say 'exercising' rather than 'running' because the first time I noticed it I was raving on the dance floor at the after-race party. As I strutted my stuff my breathing became unusually fast. The next morning I followed the team out of the door for an early morning run up the mountain. Follow them is exactly what I did because as soon as we hit the first climb they were away and soon looked like little dots further up the mountain. I was struggling. I didn't have a heart rate monitor on but I reckon I must have been way above my normal rate. I resorted to walking with hands on knees, which I'm told is an acceptable mountain running technique!

My first conclusion is that the fitter you are the less you notice the effects of altitude because the youngsters, who are at the top of their game, didn't seem to notice it at all on the training run but the second conclusion is that the easier you run the less you notice it. When they competed the day before most of them looked 'heavier legged' than they do when they race in Britain and several of them thought they had performed slightly under par. See the results on the England Athletics website

Most physiologist agree that you need to stay at altitude for 3 weeks to acclimatise to it and build the extra oxygen carrying red blood cells. Our youngsters arrived the day before so they were not acclimatised at all. Apparently the England football team went to Austria to acclimatise. We think of Austria as a mountainous country so you would think that this would be a good plan but when you look at where they were actually based you will see they were at 600m above sea level where the oxygen is still in plentiful supply, but I'm sure they had a lovely hotel with all the trimmings so that's good isn't it?! About as much use as a chocolate tea pot! They used altitude kit whilst they exercised but, let's face it, they could have done that at home. The air only really gets noticably thin at 1500m or higher. You would think that any sports person with an interest in international competition would know this. Apparently not. It has been widely reported that, after a training run on the beach in South Africa, Robbie Savage who was over there doing some commentating remarked to his running partner, that he wondered what all the altitude fuss was about....he hadn't noticed the altitude on his run at all!!

After our training run we travelled home on Lufthansa via Munich and were on the flight to Manchester for the duration of the England v Germany game. The pilot gave regular updates of the football score: 1 - 0, 2- 0, 2-1, 3 -1, 4 -1....the athletes were gutted! Their team manager commented that it still wasn't too late, "They still have time to score another 3 goals" I thought about this, "and they would too if they performed with the guts that these young athletes showed in their races yesterday, but until they adopt the same mental approach they won't"

Enough said.