Corrections for altitude?

[nmbogdan]

I appreciate that there is a correction for elevation and am wondering if there is something similar for altitude. I ask because while the majority of my runs are in NYC my most recent ones have been in Albuquerque, NM, which sits some 5500ft (1676m) above NYC. Naturally, even after acclimating, my HR for a given pace is higher than it would be at sea level, in turn dropping my VO2 Max.

Thanks!

[laufhannes]

That's not possible so far, although I'm aware of some calculations to adjust for altitude.

I'm unsure about the following:
- Should altitude correction be done always or only optional?
- If optional, should it be activated by default?
- And: Do we have to let the user choose his 'baseline'? People living and running at 500m may want to see the prognosis for 500m - not for sea level.

[nmbogdan]

Thanks for this response! If an altitude adjustment were included I would personally prefer it to be activated by default, though still be optional, since it seems like one would like to have an accurate sense of their VO2 Max for any given run regardless of where they happen to do the majority of their runs. The thought, I guess, is that by adjusting all VO2 Max for altitude the values displayed would simply be indexed to sea level. For me, the trickier question regards projections. One possibility is indeed to ask the user to set a baseline altitude and then to use VO2 Max adjusted to this altitude to generate paces and the like—all the while keeping the displayed VO2 Max values indexed to sea level, as I take it that the primary benefit of seeing VO2 Max is tracking trends. That is, I'm assuming that when users want to make use of VO2 Max they turn to the tools that use it as input rather than calculate in their head what a certain VO2 Max corresponds to. I could, of course, be wildly off in this assumption.

[bittle]

Isn't the corrected VO2 max trying to estimate the ability of the athlete? If so, that same athlete running at higher altitude will run slower, with probably a higher heart rate - particularly before they adapt to the altitude. Currently Runalyze is estimating about 44 corrected for me, (garmin fenix 5 gives about 53) running at sea level. When I go run up at about 6000ft (1800m) altitude, Runalyze corrected VO2 max drops to about 37, but garmin stays the same. I know this is only n=1 but https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16311764/ does look like altitude plays a large role. If runalyze is estimating race pace based on the corrected VO2 max, then if there's no elevation correction, it's only estimating for altitude at the same altitude as the training data - reasonable unless we're going to a race at a different altitude.