Training to Climb Mt. Everest
VO2 Max testing in 2008. I did another one at the start of the year before I began training for Everest.
There's surprisingly little specific information available for training to climb the big Himalayan peaks, or high altitude mountains. Searching the web yielded Ed Viesturs's training program. I tried Ed's program of 4-days-on, 1-day-off (which means less than one day of rest in a typical training week), but I was pretty whacked out by the 4th day. And then the 1-day-off wasn't enough recovery time, so I couldn't get the intensity up during the next 4-day-on cycle. I've now settled into a 3-day-on, 1-day off cycle, and this has been working well for me.
I read as many books as I could find on the subject, including: Mark Twight's Extreme Alpinism
Twight and I seem to have read the same books. Twight's nutrition advice agrees with Dr. Michael Colgan's groundbreaking 1993 book Optimum Sports Nutrition
Core training. Photo © Laura Liong
It's about a year til my Everest climb, and from Experience, I know I'll get burned out if I try to plan out a macro training program that allows me to achieve peak fitness once in a whole year. So I've broken it down into two roughly 6-month long programs. I plan to peak my fitness to climb Mt. Chola, China (6168m) in August, take a short break, and the train up again to peak fitness for the Mt. Everest climb in the Spring of 2011.
0 Response to "Training to Climb Mt. Everest"
Post a Comment