@
aaronmcd I stay at the same place as @
Heathpack when I ski in Park City. The base elevation is 6900 feet. Day 1, I notice that my heart rate and urination increase. By day 3, I am in full altitude impact which may include headaches and trouble sleeping. By day 5, I am better and on day 7 on the plane home, I seem okay. Altitude adaptation takes 21 days so day 7 is just the start of improvement. And adaptation is different for everyone. Skiing, although aerobic, does not impact me that much due to cycling but I know that I am not in real skiing shape.
When I climbed Mount Lemmon, my power went to hell above 7000 feet such that the last 3 miles of the climb due to altitude and just being tired after climbing 23 miles.
We may need a BF "jack up" thread. I totally get where you are coming from. I have been racing and training consistently for 10 years. I love the feeling of being in race shape. Training and workouts are fun. I switched to timed events on the road and timed and team events at the track. I have a racing goal and I can structure training goals to meet my racing goal. If others show up and do not want to race hard...fine. They can cruise up the mountain or lallygag on the TT course. If I roll in last in the event, so be it but I kill it on the race. However, I have not found that competition that shows up for timed events lallygags. In fact, they seem to try really hard and improve. I would contrast that to mass start events where as you point out, may or may not be the case.
My fitness improves and I feel good about myself. If I do really well against competition all the better. The downside, if there is any, is that I am in my own head when racing and there are not a lot of timed road events. But that is okay as well since less racing frees up more time for training and other activities.
Also, I like the specialized equipment in time trials. I like to do harder efforts on the TT bike. So today, I am doing over / unders on Fiesta and some 30 second sprints in the aerobars. I could do climbing over unders but that seems too easy. I need adaptation breathing in the low aerodynamic position at reduced hip angles.
So there is always something to work for timed and team events on which is why I like racing goals, timed events and being in race shape. YMMV