Exercise scientist talks timelines for adjusting to altitude as Texas Tech football travels early
The Texas Tech football team was scheduled to leave Lubbock on Thursday, a day earlier than usual, for Saturday's opener at Wyoming.
The Red Raiders typically depart on Friday for Saturday regular-season games, but this isn't just any other destination. Wyoming officials note that War Memorial Stadium in Laramie sits at higher elevation than any other stadium in major-college football.
Below its stadium club, visible to anyone on the field, is a narrow strip of signage that reads, "Welcome to 7220 feet." Lower air pressure and less oxygen available at that elevation can cause some people to develop the lousy-feeling symptoms of altitude sickness.
For the body to adjust and produce more oxygen-carrying red blood cells requires a longer adaptation period, a University of Wyoming exercise science professor told the Avalanche-Journal.
"The production of red blood cells takes days, if not weeks," said Evan Johnson, an associate professor in the university's division of kinesiology and health. "Generally, about three weeks is how long the initial stages of adaptation take. If you want to talk about full adaptation, that's generally about anywhere between three and six months."
Symptoms of altitude sickness, according to WebMD, can include headache, dizziness, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, loss of energy, shortness of breath, sleep problems and loss of appetite.
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The Red Raiders were scheduled to spend Thursday night and Friday night in Fort Collins, Colorado, located about 5,000 feet above sea level. Lubbock's elevation is about 3,200 feet.
Tech coach Joey McGuire said he wants to see if there's a benefit of going to a higher elevation early. Tech plays Brigham Young on Oct. 21 in Provo, Utah, where the elevation is about 4,500 feet.
"Because we're playing BYU and again at a different altitude, we wanted to see if it helped us," McGuire said, "so we'll do fast Friday, which is our practice, there at a (Fort Collins) high school, let them get used to it.
"My biggest thing with going early, too, was I want them to understand how important this game is. This is an extremely important game to us. Whoever we have after this, we don't care. We know who we have this week, so anytime you can do something a little bit different, I think it gets the guys' attention."
Johnson said sports teams coming to Laramie from lower elevation probably would be better served to arrive three days before or only two or three hours before.
"There would be a benefit if they came to Laramie early," Johnson said. "Fort Collins is (about) 5,000 feet, and 6,500 feet is kind of the threshold for where a lot of these adaptations begin, so going to Fort Collins early doesn't really change that much from being in Lubbock. That's only about a 2,000-feet difference, and we (in Laramie) have over a 2,000-foot difference from Fort Collins, so there's no real benefit to going there, in my opinion."
Travel to Laramie earlier in the week, Johnson said, and it could be a different story. Some acute mountain sickness symptoms, he said, tend to reduce after about 48 hours.
"If you're playing 48 hours after you arrive," he said, "you reduce the likelihood that your players are going to have bad headaches, those sorts of things. If you're able to get three nights here, those first two nights are generally where a lot of the sleep disruptions occur, so you could get, (on) that third night, a really good sleep before the game. Being in Fort Collins, in my opinion, you're below that 6,500-foot threshold, you don't see a lot of difference between 3,000 and 5,000 feet."
The Red Raiders are scheduled to go from Fort Collins to Laramie, a distance of about 65 miles, on game day. The two teams kick off at 6:30 p.m. CDT Saturday.
That might work out well, given that some coaches believe spending as little time as possible at higher elevation is best.
"That's an approach that the U.S. national soccer team has taken when they travel to play games in, like, Mexico City," Johnson said. "It's at a similar altitude to Laramie. They use a protocol that's called fly-in/fly-out. They basically arrive as close to game time as they can so they can minimize (effects). Acute mountain sickness tends to onset about six to eight hours after arrival, so if you can arrive two to three hours before game time, play the game and get out of Dodge, you can mostly limit your likelihood of having these symptoms."
One thing Tech players have going for them is youth.
"There's a lot of variability in response," Johnson said. "Some people come (to) altitude — especially young, healthy adults — no problem. But there are other people who come to even moderate altitudes or lower altitudes, below 6,500 feet, and will have a large physiological response."
College football
Who: Texas Tech at Wyoming
When: 6:30 p.m. CDT Saturday
Where: War Memorial Stadium, Laramie, Wyoming
TV: CBS
Records in 2023: Texas Tech 8-5, 5-4 in the Big 12; Wyoming 7-6, 5-3 in the Mountain West
Rankings (AP/AFCA USA TODAY coaches poll): Texas Tech receiving votes/24; Wyoming unranked in both.
Line: Texas Tech by 14. Over-under: 50 1/2 points.
Game guarantee: Wyoming to pay Texas Tech $300,000.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Exercise scientist talks adjusting to altitude as Texas Tech football travels early
