At CU, Altitude Is The Buffs' Best Friend
March 24, 2016 | General
BOULDER — Wherever athletic endeavors are contested on the University of Colorado campus, the number 5,345 feet is clearly evident.
That number is CU's elevation — and it's an intimidating number for visiting athletes.
“Elevation can be an advantage when running here at home against sea-level teams if their coaches aren't careful and prepared for the adjustment,” said CU cross country and track and field coach Mark Wetmore.
Wetmore has been beating elevation for 24 years and the Buffs have been winning titles because of it throughout his tenure.
But the fear of elevation is real for opposing teams and athletes coming to Boulder to compete. It is something for which athletes must prepare and adjust.
Kevin Nicol is an exercise physiologist with the University of Colorado Sports Medicine and Performance Center. He describes exactly what an athlete is facing coming to the higher elevation to compete.
“We as people are nothing more than just a combustible engine. We rely on oxygen to oxidize our substrates,” Nicol said. “So we have fats, carbohydrates, and lactate as the three fuel substrates. We can metabolize fats as long as we stay in a low or moderate intensity level.
“We require oxygen. So when our bodies don't have the access to a larger amount of oxygen, then we can't metabolize fats as easily. So we end up relying more on the carbohydrate system, which is a bad thing.”
Nicol explained what they are looking for from athletes when they are competing at high elevation.
“We want the athlete to burn fat more efficiently, because when we burn out our carbohydrates, we hit the bottom,” Nicol said. “ The higher we go, the more carbohydrates we burn, and again we hit that wall. So to train for higher elevations you have to change the way you train. You have a higher force output at sea level, so if you try to maintain those same forces and heart rates at higher elevation, you might be stepping over the line.”
Nicol said there are strategies to avoid or at least delay stepping over that line.
“One thing that an athlete can do is increase the amount of carbohydrates before coming here to compete,” Nicol said. “We try and tell athletes to increase their gels and sport drink intake as well. If you try and run what you run at sea level here at higher elevations you will probably fall short.”
So without preparing and getting ready, a visit to Boulder can turn ugly for an athlete competing in any sport, not just in endurance sports.
In basketball the effect is evident. Teams spend extra time in huddles during timeouts, along with increasing the rate of substitutions. The goal, of course, is to combat the elevation and come away with a win.
Morgan Pearson, a senior at CU, transferred from Duke and grew up in New Jersey running at sea level. He runs cross country, and on the track runs distances ranging from 800 meters to 10,000 meters.
“The key for me in the races is to be as relaxed as possible,” Pearson said. “We train extremely hard, and I always enter a race with expectations to succeed.
“For me though, coming here and facing the elevation wasn't intimidating at all. Coach Wetmore is such a good coach and I always knew that he would be able to coach me to make the adjustment. Coming from New Jersey he knew where I was coming from and he knows what it takes.”
Pearson has run plenty of races in his career, but there was one in particular where the elevation got his number.
“For me the 2013 Pac-12 championships, held in Louisville, was a learning experience,” Pearson said. “I was running really well in practice and my races had been solid. The race felt kind of slow in the beginning, and in my head I guess I forgot I was running at elevation instead of sea level. So I took the lead and started to push the pace, and I didn't do too well in the second half of the race. Had it been run at sea level, that technique might have worked, but being at elevation I felt it and got rocked.”
Pearson has been successful at adjusting to the elevation, but other athletes might not have as such an easy job. But fortunately for the Buffs and any endurance runners who are looking to take the next step, Wetmore has mastered the art of dealing with elevation and passes that along to his athletes.
“An athlete like Morgan Pearson coming from New Jersey, where I come from, with the right mental adjustments, can manage it immediately,” Wetmore said. “He just has to be willing to slow down, pay attention to his respiratory system and not be ruled by his neuro-muscular memory. In other words he can't go the rhythm sea level legs want to go.”
Wetmore makes sure to pass that advice to all of his athletes: “Slow down, pay attention to your respiratory system and over rule your neuro-muscular memory.”
Wetmore has produced seven NCAA team titles since 2000, 31 conference championships and 10 Olympians. He has also had tremendous success with athletes who have gone on to professional careers.
But he doesn't focus on only recruiting athletes from higher-elevation places in the country.
“We recruit everywhere in the country, and we don't have a particular preference for elevation athletes,” Wetmore said. “We have had a lot of success with athletes from Colorado, but we've had a lot of success with athletes from sea level. One year we won the NCAA women's cross country championships with a woman from California, a woman from Georgia, a woman from Texas and a woman from Florida, making our entire team from sea level. We recruit everywhere and we don't have a preference of elevation.”
Beating the elevation is all about preparing as an athlete, and more importantly preparing as a coach. The battle has been lost by many athletes both collegiately and professionally.
But for the past 24 years coach Mark Wetmore has been winning the elevation battle and his techniques have been setting athletes up for success, both collegiately and beyond.
Players Mentioned
