It was a frigid Friday night in Bozeman, MT. Outside, snowflakes fell silently from the glowing winter sky. Inside, a crowd screamed for a 19-year-old kid about to make history.
Patrick Casey’s strides were smooth and sure as he glided around Brick Breeden Fieldhouse. He looped the banked 200-meter track in nearly even splits, his long, lean body showing no sign of fatigue.
He led by 50 meters, then 100, then 150. No one could touch him as he crossed the 800 mark in just over two minutes—right on schedule.
He started to hurt. His lungs and muscles were on fire. He tasted the familiar bitterness of lactic acid on his tongue. He dropped his shoulders and shook out his arms, trying to stay loose as he flew by the 1200 mark.
The crowd chanted his name in a rhythm that matched his steady cadence: “Pat, Pat, Pat, Pat…” Their energy carried him through the final lap. He sprinted through the line and bended over, resting his hands on his shaking knees as he gasped for breath.
As soon as he was able, he looked up at the scoreboard to see his final time. The arena erupted in cheers as it appeared in lights: 4:04.44.
To the average sports fan, it would appear that Casey had fallen just over four seconds short of achieving the fame and prestige that come with running a sub-four-minute mile. But according to the NCAA, the sophomore distance runner from Laurel had become the second Montana native in history to break the four-minute mark in the mile.
Why? Because Bozeman—home to Casey’s school, Montana State University—is located in the heart of the Gallatin Valley at an elevation of about 4,800 feet.
In an effort to keep things fair, the NCAA allows for the adjustment of times run at high altitudes to reflect what an athlete’s performance would have been at sea level. The problem is, fair means different things to different people.
According to the adjustment scale, Casey’s 4:04.44 was the equivalent of a 3:59.17. Theoretically, that means that if he had run the exact same race in the exact same conditions at sea level, he would have run approximately five seconds faster because his lungs, heart and muscles wouldn’t have been working as hard as early.
“As we go to higher altitudes, we have the same percentage of oxygen, but the problem is that the pressure goes down. And as the pressure goes down, that amount of oxygen becomes less than absolute,” says Dr. Steven Gaskill, associate professor in the Health and Human Performance department at the University of Montana.
According to Gaskill, an athlete’s ability to perform is greatly compromised as altitude increases because there is less time for oxygen to diffuse into the blood. This decreases the percentage of hemoglobin that binds to oxygen molecules, which means less oxygen is delivered to the muscles.
“For athletes working at very high intensities, we begin to see decreases in performance probably as low as maybe 3,000 feet,” Gaskill says. “And by the time we get to 6,000 or 7,000 feet, performances are dramatically decreased.”
When there is a shortage of oxygen in the blood, the body is forced to do more anaerobic work, which leads to an excess of lactic acid. The lactic acid must be buffered in the blood, which leads to a build-up of carbon dioxide molecules. That build-up is what causes breathing distress, Gaskill says.
“You feel like you’re breathing harder, and you are breathing harder. You’re ventilating more air,” Gaskill says. “But it’s not really because you need more oxygen, or because it’s going to help increase your oxygen—it’s because you’re feeling more CO2.”
Basically, the body is working harder to sustain a pace at altitude than it would be working to sustain the same pace at sea level. Athletes tend to be very in tune with their bodies, and they usually notice the difference quickly.