My Advice, Stick to studying for the board before you go.
The flying or should I say the pace of it is quite demanding and it's not unusual to fly twice a day, but it's not something you can really prepare for, it's matter of applying the techniques they teach you to the best of your ability. I personally didn't have time to even think about the board until the flying was done. Example ; I had my CT-4 checkride and my first Cap-10 flight within a couple of hours of each other! That's not uncommon. It's a lot of information to digest so you spend most of your nights studying for the next day's flying.
On the altitude question, I did my Cap-10 checkride on a beautiful morning and I think we got up around 6000-6500ft at one stage.
The Cap-10 is quite different as you will experience(he he!) and therefore a lot of different information needs to be taken on board.