Belgian pro rider Victor Campenaerts has taken his altitude preparation to new heights, setting his altitude mask to the equivalent of 10,000 metres for one hour each day.
That’s higher
than anywhere on earth as the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest, peaks
out at 8,848 metres.
The former European TT champion and current world hour record holder has been sleeping in a tent mimicking an altitude of 4,700m; aimed at depriving the body of oxygen so it will produce more red blood cells.
But not content with sleeping in a tent mimicking an
altitude more than double most of the largest climbs in the Tour de France,
Campenaerts is now pushing it a step further by going “super high” one hour at
a time.
"Every afternoon I put on a mask for an hour and my oxygen supply is reduced. It’s called 'intermittent hypoxic training',” he told Het Laatste Nieuws, adding it was based on research by scientists.
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"The extremely low oxygen concentration gives your
body an extreme incentive to produce extra red blood cells.
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“I don't think many athletes do this. It's an experiment
– I'm trying to be a pioneer and now I have time to try it out."
When he spoke two weeks ago of sleeping at the equivalent
of 4,700 metres he said he was doing very little training because the impact of
the tent on his body was extreme.
“Medically, that is the height at which you are just not
starting to die. If you went higher, your body would start to break down
because it is too heavy,” he said at the time.
However, he has insisted that by combining sleeping as
high as 4,700m and wearing a mask for one hour set at 10,000m he had already
noticed it in his condition.
“The preliminary results are very good: I broke all my
wattage records, but I hear that from different riders so it's not abnormal,”
he said.
"We've never had such a long period in which we can
train in such a structured way. That way, that had to pay off."
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