Is elevation training beneficial?
 

I’ll try to make this as brief but complete as I can….. I’m a 61 year old cyclist training for my first double century. I’ve signed up for the Bass Lake Powerhouse Double in Clovis this October. I’ve completed a number of centuries in the past two years so I’m not a complete stranger to a bit of mileage.
I happen to live fairly close to the Lake Tahoe area and frequently train on a 12.5 mile section that is a steady climb from about 5500 ft to 7100 ft. The Clovis ride has more climbing but at less than 1/2 that elevation. In addition to my other training rides focusing on a day of simply riding as hard as I can on flats for about 38 miles and on other days casually riding 75-80 miles, is the higher elevation training really helping me over say training on local hills which are a much shorter drive (but lower elevation)

It is said, "ride low and sleep high." The idea is that riding at altitude is actually counterproductive because you're not putting out as many watts as you would at sea level. OTOH, sleeping high will cause you to add some RBCs, but they take quite a while to mature, 30 days? I think one does come out on living at altitude for long periods. There's a XC track team from a town at 3000' which beats our sea level team regularly. Before we did a high altitude hike, my wife and I spent a few days resting at 10,000'. Seemed like that worked.

Training at those altitudes for an event at 1/2 those altitudes adds no value in my opinion. By not driving out to the big hills, you could use that time for more training and that could be productive if your body handles additional load.