Train & Prepare
In late 2022, we decided to return to the Khumbu Valley the following spring for another go at the 3 Passes. Being about 8 months out from our departure, we knew that doing some real training would be necessary.
We’d already been working with Uphill Athlete for some Alps projects but never with a dedicated coach and training program. The care and attention they gave us was extraordinary. We each had individualized coaching plans and worked with a specialized high altitude coach and a nutritionist.
That program was key for getting us over 3 Passes in a day. Best of all, we came out wiser for it with a huge amount of knowledge we then carried forward to many more trips.
Steve House, owner and coach at Uphill Athlete, was gracious enough to share his wisdom about running in the Khumbu. There may be no better resource than Uphill Athlete, I encourage you to explore their offers and dig into all the many podcasts they’ve released about this very subject. If you’d like to start with something simple, I highly recommend the same thing I began with, Chamonix Mountain Fit (save 10% with code : elevation).
What It Takes to Run in the Khumbu Valley
Advice from Steve House, Uphill Athlete
A few months ago we got a note from a runner in her late thirties. Strong road marathoner, a couple of trail ultras under her belt, sub-four-hour marathon, the kind of athlete who trains consistently and reads about training on her lunch break. She had spent two weeks in Nepal years earlier on a teahouse trek and never quite got over it. Now she wanted to go back and run. Three weeks, a loop through the Khumbu, Gokyo to Everest Base Camp by way of the Cho La, run what could be run, hike what couldn’t. She gave herself nine months. She wanted to know what she should be doing.
We get some version of this question every year. The specifics change. Sometimes it’s Manaslu, sometimes a high traverse in the Cordillera Blanca, sometimes a long objective in the Alps. The shape of the question does not. A competent endurance athlete has set her sights on a mountain environment that doesn’t behave like the one she trained in, and she’s trying to figure out whether what she’s already doing is enough.
Our answer, usually, is that she’s closer than she thinks in one domain and further than she realizes in three others. That gap is what we want to talk about here.
Running in the Khumbu is not running at altitude the way a trip to Leadville is running at altitude. The trailhead at Lukla sits at roughly 2,800 meters. By the time you reach Gorak Shep you are above 5,100, and if you cross the Cho La or tag Kala Patthar you are pushing past 5,500. That is not a zone where you adapt by showing up fit. It is a zone where a poorly managed ascent ends trips, and sometimes worse. The terrain underfoot is rough, stepped, and frequently loose. Long sections that look runnable on a map are, in practice, steep enough and chunky enough that running them costs more than walking them. Yak trains, porters, and trekkers share the trail. Weather can shut a pass for days. None of this is exotic knowledge to people who have spent time there. It is, however, almost entirely absent from the training logic of a road marathoner.
So when we sit down with an athlete like the one who wrote us, we are not building a running plan. We are building a preparation that happens to include running. The distinction matters.
The first thing we look at is the aerobic base, and this is usually where the athlete is strongest and also where the easiest mistakes get made. A sub-four marathoner has a real engine. What she may not have is an engine built for six- to eight-hour days at low intensity, back to back, for three weeks. The training that produces a fast road marathon and the training that produces a durable mountain athlete overlap, but they are not the same thing. We are looking for volume at conversational pace, long days on feet, and an aerobic system that can keep fat oxidation high when glycogen is the limiter it will become at altitude. Most runners coming to us from the road have under-trained the lower end of their aerobic range and over-trained the top. Correcting that takes months, not weeks, and it is the single highest-yield thing a mountain-bound runner can do with the year before a trip.
The second domain is what we call durability, which is mostly a strength and tissue-tolerance question. The Khumbu will ask your legs to absorb a great deal of descent on uneven ground, often with a loaded pack, often tired, often at altitude where recovery between days is compromised. Runners who have never done real strength work arrive in the mountains with calves, hips, and connective tissue that are fit for one job and asked to do another. We build in general strength early and shift toward max strength and muscular endurance as the trip approaches. The goal is not to look like a different athlete. The goal is to make the descents on day twelve feel like the descents on day three.
The third domain is altitude, and here we are honest with athletes in a way that sometimes surprises them. You cannot train for 5,500 meters by living at sea level and running hills. You can prepare your body to tolerate the acclimatization process, and you can build a trip schedule that respects how acclimatization actually works, but the adaptation itself has to happen on the mountain. That means the itinerary is part of the training plan. A nine-month preparation that ends with a rushed ascent profile is a nine-month preparation wasted. We spend real time on ascent rates, rest days, sleeping altitudes, and the difference between feeling fine at 4,500 meters on day six and feeling fine at 5,300 meters on day ten. Where it is available and sensible, we discuss pre-acclimatization strategies. Where it is not, we build the trip to do the work.
The fourth domain is fueling, which becomes its own problem at altitude in a way it simply is not at home. Appetite suppresses. Absorption gets worse. Sleep degrades and takes recovery with it. A runner who fuels well on a six-hour long run at 500 meters may find herself unable to eat a bar above 5,000. We work on carbohydrate tolerance during training, practice fueling strategies on long days in the hills, and plan for the predictable calorie deficit that comes with high camps. This is one of the places where training logic has to meet logistics logic. What you can carry, what you can stomach, and what you can buy in Namche are all part of the same question.
The last domain is the mental one, and it is the hardest to prescribe. The Khumbu rewards patience and punishes hurry. Runners, by temperament, tend to be poor at the first and good at the second. An athlete who has spent her career chasing splits has to learn to walk, to turn around, to add a rest day, to accept that a summit morning is a small piece of a large trip. We talk about this directly with the athletes we work with, because the mental habits that produce a marathon PR are not the ones that keep you safe and moving in the Khumbu. They are, in some cases, the opposite.
This is why a generic marathon block or a stock ultra plan is the wrong tool. Those plans are built around a specific event with a known duration, a known surface, and a known altitude. The Khumbu is not an event. It is an environment. An athlete preparing for it has to train for a range of days she cannot predict exactly, at altitudes that will reshape her capacity daily, with a pack weight she will not carry in training, on terrain she cannot truly simulate. The preparation has to be built from the specific demands of that environment and the specific gaps of that athlete. There is no plan in a book that does that, including ours.
We also tell people that real preparation takes longer than they think. Nine months is enough for the athlete we described above, barely, because she has an aerobic base to build on and because she is willing to reshape her training rather than add to it. Athletes coming from less depth need longer, often a year or more, and we would rather say that plainly than sell them a shorter timeline that leaves them underprepared in the place where underpreparation is most expensive.
If any of this is landing for you, the next step depends mostly on your timeline. For an athlete inside a year of a Khumbu objective, one-on-one coaching is usually the right call. The preparation we have been describing asks for real individualization: aerobic work tuned to where your engine actually is, strength programming that respects your history and your injuries, an altitude strategy built around the specific itinerary you are going to run, and a fueling plan tested in training rather than on the mountain. That is what a coach does. If you have more than a year, our Training Groups are a strong way to build the base this kind of trip demands while training alongside other mountain athletes, with a coach watching the group and adjusting as needed. And there is a fair amount of free material on Uphill Athlete that speaks to altitude, durability, and fueling specifically.
The runner who wrote to us in the spring leaves for Nepal soon. Her training has looked almost nothing like the training she did for her last marathon. She is, by her own account, slower on the track than she was a year ago and stronger on every trail she cares about. That is usually how this goes, when it goes well.
Steve House is one of the world’s foremost alpinists, co-author of the mountain sport training manuals “Training for the New Alpinism” and “Training for the Uphill Athlete”, coach, podcaster, and the owner of Uphill Athlete.
Acclimatization Strategy
Understanding the importance of proper acclimatization, staying healthy, and how to recognize altitude related health problems is critical for a trip to the Himalaya.
Ueli Steck once told me that the people who have the most problems going to the Himalaya are athletes. Why? They overdo it.
As athletes, we’re used to a certain level of performance from our bodies. It’s easy to underestimate the impact elevation has on our systems. Even as low as 2800 meters, as you get started on your way up the Khumbu Valley, the body is becoming stressed. You’re in a new environment, with different food and bacteria, and you’ve likely just come off a long travel schedule. What might start as a small issue can turn big as you move to higher elevation.
Additionally, the fitter you are, the faster you might be used to going. Pushing the heart rate leads to early fatigue. At higher elevations, recovery doesn’t happen like it does lower. If you unnecessarily push into the red it can be hard to recover, weakening your system and making it vulnerable to the many viruses you can catch. A good strategy, especially for first time visitors, is to move slowly,slower than you may think you need to.
Be patient. The days will come where you’ll get to move faster, and when they do, you’ll already have some experience and understanding of how you are feeling. Plus, the running movement is self-limiting, you’ll quickly understand just how much you can run. It’s normal to walk uphill and bumpier flats, and save the running for smoother flats and the downhills.
There are far more knowledgeable resources out there than what we can provide. A coach specialized in altitude training and nutrition should be consulted.
Staying Healthy in the Khumbu Valley
Equally as important as proper acclimatization is staying healthy. Nasty viruses and infections are in abundance while you’re living in tight quarters, in a dry, dusty and dirty environment, with trekkers from all over the world. Add a body weakened from elevation into the mix and the odds are high that you’ll get something. Probably, the infamous Khumbu Cough.
I’ve learned some useful tips from far more Himalaya experienced friends, David Goettler and the late, great Ueli Steck. David is a master of managing his health and someone I greatly respect for the care he takes to do things well.
- Get lots of sleep
- Wear a buff!!
- Stay out of the dining room when it is busy
- Monitor your Blood Oxygen levels (<80% is cause for concern)
- Use a sinus cleaning method like inhaling essential oils in boiling water
- Consider using an Airtime mask when running above 4000 meters
- Take rest days
Again, patience is a key skill. As an athlete used to pushing, you can’t push and expect the same recovery. And yet, you are in the Himalaya, on what is probably a dream trip, with at least one bigger objective, and you are feeling like you should charge every day. Unless you get very lucky, you can’t.
Go into your trip with a Plan A, B, C, and probably even D.