PHOTO© SUE MORNING
Rita Klabacha prepares Lowell Jones for a VO
2
max test.
THE THIN AIR WE BREATHE:
High Altitude Training and the Human Lab
For those of us who aren’t Olympic athletes, just the thought of madness, which is precisely the reason we see bundled up runners
running ten miles at 8,000 feet can make us huff and puff. Some of bouncing around the Mammoth roads looking as calm as if they were
us huff and puff just tying our shoelaces, especially visitors to the on the couch, reading a book.
area who haven’t acclimated to the altitude. That altitude creates The science angle is extensive and also contentious, still a theory
an environment where air pressure and humidity are significantly yet to be proven. (See “The Theory” sidebar pg 36.) As an athlete
lower than at sea level and oxygen is harder to pass through vascular myself, having been in competitive and Olympic-level rowing since
systems. Thus the body has to work harder to do the same job as it I was 12, I wondered what high altitude is doing for these athletes
would at sea level. For some, mainly competitive athletes, that is in the short and long run and how it relates to those just trying to be
actually a good thing, and they seek out training in places where the fit enough to make it from the top of Dave’s run to the Eagle Lodge
air is thin. without stopping to get the feeling back in their legs and the air back
Exercise physiologist Rita Klabacha is an expert in what thin into their lungs.
air does to athletes, and regular folks. She studies the effect of high These are the questions Klabacha has set out to answer, as well,
altitude on people at the Sierra Park Physical and Occupational through the Human Performance Lab at SPORT. With the equipment
Therapy (SPORT). The fact is there is science behind all this at the lab she conducts tests that measure the performance ability
July | August 2009 Mammoth Sierra Magazine 33
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