It is safe to say that there are not many swimmers training at 9000 feet of altitude. But I like to swim so I had to figure out how to adapt my body to the Winter Park Colorado elevation where I have lived for more than a year now.
One of the problems with swimming at altitude is that the amount of air volume that I take per length is fairly fixed. I take about the same numbers of breaths per length. I average about 16 to 17 strokes per 25 yards of swimming. This means that I take 7 or 8 breaths per length. When I run or ride at altitude I can just breathe more often but that is very hard to do in the pool. As a result the pace suffers or the heart rate shoots up.
When I first swam here I could not do flip turns. Flip turns force you to hold your breath for about 5+ seconds each length and there was just no way. But as time progressed I could do 500 or 1000 yards steady with all the flip turns. It took a while.
The pool where I swim is part of the YMCA and it is used by many people visiting town with their families. There is only one lap lane but as I mentioned, you will be hard pressed to have any visitor doing laps. Just today some guy asked me if he could share the lane with me. Sure I said. He did not last a 200. We chatted a bit and he was a swim coach from Nebraska. I did not tell him I live here. I bet he was impressed. People generally get intimidated and get out or just get frustrated and quit swimming when they have to share the lane with me. Oh well I feel like a bully but what am I supposed to do. Only one time a high school girl schooled me. She was holding 1:10 per hundred yards to my 1:18's and she was doing flip turns too. I asked her if she felt the elevation. She said no. I doubt it
Altitude training is tough. I have lived at altitude for many years and when I was a young boy in Colombia. Add that to my gene pool who lived in Colombia and I have to have a good body for it. It is not for everybody.
Training wise the mistake people make is to go to altitude and train just like they did at sea level. The lack of oxygen helps your body increase EPO levels which lead to increased red blood cell mass. However, the lack of oxygen also reduces the ability to recover from training and as you all know if you do not recover then you can not absorb the training and get faster.
A couple of months ago I went to Hawaii for a vacation/business trip and I did some really hard two hour rides. The next day I did not even feel the rides. I was fully recovered. I came back to 9000 feet altitude and rode for two hours hard and I was wasted the next couple of days. Wow! What a reminder.
In any case come and experience what I am talking about with me. I have a
camp here in Winter Park Colorado in August. You may be out a breath a little but the beauty of this area and the views during the rides and runs will help you forget. I promise to not give you many long swims. We will concentrate on technique quite a bit. My last campers had a blast in between sessions.