Into Thin Air
The vineyards and peach orchards that blanket the coastal plain of Langeudoc-Roussillon gradually give way to forestry, the slopes become steeper and the bends sharper as the road twists and turns up the 90 kilometres and into the eastern French Pyrenees.
As the air gets thinner, so do the numbers of tourists. So by the time you reach 1,600 metres or so above sea level the road becomes less of a tourist trail - in July at least - and more the type of route you would expect only the most dedicated of pilgrim to travel; still climbing, still searching for spiritual rejuvenation by getting that one step closer to God.
At 1,836 metres, notice is served by the fact that this particular peak in the Pyrenees has been called the Col Calvaire, or Calvary. But it also marks the altitude at which the Lycee Climatique et Sportif comes into view. And here you enter the world of a new breed of pilgrims.
It is in this rarefied atmosphere that the French Government as far back as the early 1960s decided to build its sportsmen an altitude training camp where now around 200 elite athletes from a multitude of sports and a wide variety of countries gather each year in a kind of small-scale Olympic village to prepare for major championships. It's here that British long-distance runner Paula Radcliffe spends most of her summers, even higher up the mountain; and it's why race walkers Gillian O'Sullivan, Olive Loughnane and Jamie Costin are here for three weeks to prepare for next month's IAAF World Track and Field Championships in Paris.
The reason they are here is because at altitude the air becomes thinner.
You can sniff the ozone up here, it's remarkable; but a stroll up an innocuous looking flight of steps leaves you feeling gasping for breath. It takes even these elite athletes at least five days to acclimatise.
"It's much harder to breath up here in the mountains," Costin says. "At altitude there's much less oxygen in the air. It really drains you and for the first week you're just getting acclimatised to it.
"From day 10 to day 25 is when you really train hard," Costin says. "We're walking five minute kilometres here at an intensity that's much harder than at sea level. So you're going much stronger at the same speed. That's the whole benefit of the altitude. You get fitter quicker but with more pain.
"When you go back down by about day five you feel like you've got an extra lung, like in a pack on my back, you just feel so much more powerful and strong. But if you go too hard when you feel so good you can end up hurting yourself."
"The altitude has a distinct physiological effect," Loughnane explains. "It increases your haemoglobin so it allows you to carry oxygen around the body better. And your body adapts to that while you're here and when you go home you're able to train harder for about a week and then you peak again after about 21 days."
O'Sullivan, who has visited Font Romeu once before and also trained at altitude in Johannesburg, says training times decrease markedly once the athletes acclimatise.
"For the first couple of days your throat feels really dry. You have to really hold yourself back the first couple of days because you'd train at a faster pace at home and your heart rates are going to be much faster here.
"So you have to ease yourself in here. But having gone a couple of times to training camps at altitude, I've brought my training diaries with me from then and our levels, heart rates, lactates and so on are better now on day five this time round than on day five previously. Days four and five are your worst days.
Explained O'Sullivan: "You need a lot of sleep up here. It's like you're a monk. It takes a couple of days to get used to it and once you're into it it's okay. But you are kind of reminding yourself this is just for three weeks."
O'Sullivan explains the training part of the day in a little more detail. "We go out walking along the different routes that are around here.
"We're just starting our training at altitude here so we're just doing 10 or 15ks at the moment, just steady stuff. We walk a 2.5km loop in one place and in another forest area we go out and back to a lake. There's another place at the top of the mountain at 2100 metres altitude and up there you feel the difference again.
"As we become more acclimatised we'll intensify both distance and speed, going faster for longer. That will be towards the end of this week.
"We'll get maybe two long walks, around 25k or just over 15 miles, - Jamie will do some longer ones, 30km or whatever - before we go home and we'll do some speed work on the track as well.
"It will certainly be more specific. For now we're just making sure we don't overdo it.
"We train until about 11.45am and then break for lunch at 12. Then we rest or go down to the internet café in the town and just get out of the place to break the day. Then we go to the track at around five in the evening for more training. It's an easier session and we might get a massage we train with the Polish walkers and they have a great physio - or go to the gym here. Then it's more food at dinner time and we'll wind down with a coffee and a chat before an early bedtime. The day passes quick enough."
Loughnane and O'Sullivan race on August 24 in the women's 20km race while Costin goes three days later in the 50km, the longer of the two men's events.
"It's a long way," he admits, "race walking 31 miles you either need to have your head screwed on or be missing all your brain cells altogether. Take your pick."
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