Training for the New Alpinism: A Manual for the Climber as Athlete

by Steve House

For some of you this will be the hardest zone to train in. You may find that you can barely jog, or can only hike uphill very slowly, before you must begin mouth breathing or your speech becomes disrupted and your heart rate starts to climb out of this zone, right through Zone 2 and into Zone 3. This situation arises more often that you might think. This phenomenon is called Aerobic Deficiency Syndrome, and people this afflicts are forced to rely on the contributions of high-intensity, anaerobic energy pathways even to do slow-paced work. We have seen many such athletes. If you find yourself short of breath at low intensities and low heart rates, for example, or if you are unable to carry on a conversation while hiking up the approach trail, then you really need to take the time to read Mark Twight’s essay “TINSTAAFL” and understand chapter 3. There is a cure; we’ll give you a prescription for it in this book, but it takes time and patience. To be clear: Low intensity does not mean slow in well-conditioned athletes. Those who have spent the time to maximally develop their aerobic capacity can maintain prolonged high speeds (in conventional sports, typically 80–85 percent of race pace) at their aerobic threshold. A high