This year the U.S. National Championships are going to be held in Bend, Oregon.  Meaning, the race will be held at an elevation of around 3,000 feet.  Correlating that to athletics, the higher ones altitude is, the less dense the oxygen in the air, meaning, you have to breath in more to intake the same amount of oxygen that ones body takes in when at, similar to my Florida home, sea level.

It typically takes an individual over 30 days (I believe) to adapth to a change in oxygen content in the air.  For example, when athlete’s competed at the Mexico City (elevation about 7,000 feet) Olympic games they were flown in just prior to their race start so that their stregnth/endurance would not be as negativley affected as an individual who had arrived a week or two before.  The decline in performance is rather significant after the first day or two (if memory serves me correct) and slowly begins to work back up towards a decreased, but definitely better, level as your body adapts to the lower levels of oxygen concentration in the air. According to what I have seen, performance can decline as much as 45% over the first 4 days and then slowly builds back up, I believe it to be about 25 – 30% below, over the next 30 – 45 days, of what an athlete had at sea level.

Oxygen intake is important to athlete’s as it has a significant impact on one’s body’s ability to perform cardiovascular tasks.

1. Scott says:

   July 22, 2009 at 4:33 pm

   Alex, you are a winner regardless of the race results!!