Notes from Higher Grounds - The ultimate altitude training travel guide

When Irish steeplechaser Elizabeth Egan was planning to visit Kenya for a training holiday a decade ago, she had difficulty finding information about the best places to visit, where to stay, and if it was possible for a female to travel alone. After weeks of searching, she stumbled across the website of Lornah Kiplagat’s High Altitude Training Centre (HATC) in Iten, and arranged the first of many trips to the ‘Home of Champions’. She knew then that this sort of information should have been easier to find, and in 2010, she set about researching a travel guide which would detail how to get to Iten and 14 other popular altitude training venues across the globe.

Notes from higher grounds: an altitude training guide for endurance athletes (Kukimbia Huru Publishing) is the product of almost 4 years of research, and provides the information that any distance runner or their coach would need to arrange an altitude training trip. Any athlete that wants to run with the Kenyans or stride along the Albuquerque trails made famous by Paula Radcliffe, can now do so. Ifrane, Mammoth Lakes , and Boulder have suddenly become more accessible, and places like Falls Creek and Addis Ababa are no longer reserved for elite athletes with connections there.

Egan says ‘I hope that Notes from higher grounds will enable more athletes to sample altitude training, East African running culture, and the beautiful mountain trails of places like Font Romeu, St. Moritz and Flagstaff’.

The 368-page full-colour publication includes practical advice, spectacular photographs, interesting features, and light-hearted blog excerpts detailing the author’s own experiences and observations. It is available to purchase through http://www.altitudetrainingcamps.com/.