Altitude training

First time in Uganda | I have for a long period been looking forward to be going on a training camp again. This time in Kapchorwa, Uganda. Cold and windy weather at home in Denmark, so it's great to be able to escape the winter for a bit. Early morning on the 4th of January I left for Uganda, where I will be for 4 weeks together with Ralph Street, Milos Nykodym and Tomas Krivda. They come from the UK and the Czech Republic. I know them from my time in orienteering and have run against them many times before. This is where we will be staying for the next 4 weeks.Long travelThe journey from door to door took us about 30 hours. First by train to Copenhagen and from here with Turkish Airlines to Entebbe/Kampala. En route with stopovers in Istanbul and Kigali. From Entebbe, a 400km drive awaited us. We could thus see a bit of Uganda on the way, but in reality quite tiring after almost a day on the road already, where we really most of all just wanted to get there and find a bed. During our stay we will stay at Home of Friends Guesthouse. Quite a nice place, where the 4 of us will live in a 5-man family hut. The place has a restaurant where we get breakfast and can buy dinner with a reasonably good standard (compared to what you can buy on the street in Kapchorwa). We have a small veranda facing the garden and a nice view of the countryside. Here we also have a gas stove for cooking.First impressions of the placeAfter arrival, we were able to go for a run in daylight. First impression of the area is that it is hilly around Kapchorwa! You can run many different loops, all of them are really cool. If you hate hills, Kapchorwa is not the place for you to go. If you want to run a 10km loop, it's hard to do with less than 250m of climbing. Which I'm quite fine with as my main goal this summer is the World Orienteering Championships in the Swiss Alps. Kapchorwa is located on Mt. Elgon which is 4321m high. Big extinct volcano. At the foot of the mountain there is a gigantic plateau at an altitude of approx. 1100m. We can see this plateau from our camp - not bad. Easy run with the group.Easy training to start the training campThe place is situated 1950m above sea level. So there is not much oxygen in the air for us. Which is also the reason why we have come here - to get some altitude effect. But also some heat. We have about 25-28 degrees a day here and no rain, as January is usually the dry season. The first few days we have taken it relatively easy and only being running at an easy effort to acclimatise to the altitude.I have travelled here with a small injury in one of my glutes. Most likely something muscular. One of the things that provokes the injury the most is high speed. So I found out quite early on in the altitude stay that dropping the faster training helps with the injury. So I will go for a lot of longer and hilly runs. Not something that makes me really fast, but luckily it's only January, and there is a long time until my season really starts. However, I do not think it is such a completely stupid way of training when I wanna gain some basic fitness, and this training helps me to able to tolerate the faster training to come. Watch this to get some impressions of the area around Kapchorwa.

Road race at altitude | The start of week 3 marks just over the halfway point of the training camp. The time goes by quickly. While I am down here I have my work with me on my computer, which I spend about 30 hours a week on. Not bad with a flexible job, as it makes trips to Uganda like this possible. I have worked over 4 years at Holdsport and hope for many more years there.Tempo session with Tomas and Milos from Muyembe. The foot of Mr. Elgon can be seen in the background.Trails everywhereRarely have I experienced a place with as many trails as here! By trails I don't mean dirt roads, but small paths that weave their way between fields, banana tree plantations, around slopes, from mud house to mud house. So if you really wanted to, you could run different routes daily from Kapchorwa for months - but that assumes that you are not afraid of a little but of climbing. A 10km long loop around Kapchorwa on dirt roads will have at least 200m of climbing. If you stick to trails only, it might be at least 350m of climbing. No maps on the web, even on Strava, show many trails and potential running routes here. I would guess that less than 5% of the paths/dirt roads/trails in the area are mapped, so we really had to go exploring to find all the cool places to run.A trail runners paradise.Intensifying the trainingIt is slowly starting to get better with my glute injury, so I have gradually stepped up the intensity. So good that I have been able to participate in the Discovery Uganda 10km race, which was held in the town. Read more about the competition here.I also did some interval training on some of the area's tracks. There are 5 different tracks in the area: High altitude training center. This track opens soon and has been about 10 years in the making. The area's only tarten track, otherwise you have to go to Kampala. It is located at an altitude of 2600m. Cheptegei's own dirt track at 2500m altitude. Located next to their camp, and was built when they could not wait for the other one to be finished. You can't train on this one unless you have connections to the group. Dirt track in Kapchorwa. Not the best track in the world. Quite rocky and especially in the afternoon it's quite crowded as football and volleyball are played on the grass area with a large number of spectators. Cheptegei does not like this track, but I have seen Kiplimo use it. 8km from Kapchorwa at Sebei Collage School. Actually just a lawn with a single track around it that is 400m. Here NN do most of their speedwork. No access to this track without contacts. 21km from Kapchorwa at Chemwania Primary School. This is a pretty nice dirt track. Here NN's junior team belongs to. Relatively flat track. Located at 2050m altitude.On the way home from one of the trainings on boda boda.One of the days we went out for a easy morning jog, we saw Jakob Kiplimo and his group running intervals on the gravel track in town. It's no joke when they train. Got a picture of his splits from that workout - see bottom of page. Not a session I was going to copy here at altitude on the same track. Also got to meet Kiplimo's coach Iacopo. Really nice guy. He is an Italian at about my age and I had some good talks with him. Even went for a run with him, as he is quite a skilled runner himself.

My longest run ever | Time to make the most of the training camp. At least until a few days before the return journey home. I'm taking it easy the last few days, so I don't travel while I'm too tired, to reduce the risk of illness. The last week has offered some exciting training sessions. One of them was a 1000m threshold session with a couple of Norwegians who have also found their way to Kapchorwa. Senay Fissehatsion and Sondre Nordstrand who both have run under 29min on 10k before. We ran the session on the dirt track in town.Intervals on Chemwania track.A few days later I ran the Kapchorwa Hill Challenge. The same route used for the Ugandan Mountain Champs in 2022. I ran from the big junction in town to the HATC. It is 10.6k with 680m of climbing and goes from 1930m to 2570m altitude. The climb has a couple of short descents and varies a lot in gradient and has sections as steep as 13-15%. Impossible climb to get a good rhythm on. I ran it in 49.22min with an average pace of 4:42min/km. Would be great to see others try the climb one day.Later that day we went to the most popular place in the area. Sipi Falls. Also here other tourists are to be found. An area with some beautiful waterfalls and some caves. A cool place to go for a run for a bit of a change.Waterfall at Sipi Falls.The next day we went to the top of Mt. Elgon. Rough trip that ended up being 43km long. I've never run longer than 35km before, so it was pretty cool to push that limit a bit. It didn't make it any easier that there was also almost 3000m of climbing on the whole trip. Read more about that trip here.That made it three weeks in a row with just over 170km.On the way home where we ran into a bit of trouble.The last couple of days I took it easy. Actually not particularly tired after the mountain long, which I was a little surprised about. But maybe it sits a little more in the body than I just feel right now and here.Now the trip goes to Denmark, where the training continues towards the spring competitions.The trip in totals: Totals Average Nights at altitude 28 nights Total time runnning 53:34 hours 13:22 hr/week Total distance 619.9 k 155 k/week Climb 16020 m 4005 m Intens sessions 10 sessions 2.5 sessions/week Runs over80min or 20k 10 sessions 2.5 sessions/week Strength sessions 5 sessions 1.2 sessions/week Check this out to see a video of the whole Uganda trip.