Health/Fitness

Bend Bulletin: Local Athletes, Acclimated to Altitude, Have Leg Up

Published: Aug. 2, 2018

Bryan Lewis, who won the High Cascades 100 mountain bike race on July 21, felt nauseous and dizzy during the highest point of the 100-mile course, which is nearly 7,000 feet.

Lewis, a professional racer who lives and trains in Charlottesville, Virginia, is more accustomed to exerting himself at 600 feet — an altitude where the air’s oxygen is denser.

“Seven thousand feet is the spot where things start getting weird for me,” said Lewis, 27. “With altitude like this, I would punch up a hill, and I would be out of breath and struggling to recover quickly. I was lightheaded, which may have been food and water driven, but altitude definitely played an effect in that as well.”

Many Central Oregon athletes relish the region’s dry air, abundant sunshine and its elevation. Out-of-town athletes wonder if the locals enjoy an altitudinal advantage when training and racing in their backyard. A variety of coaches and experts say they do. If an athlete does not have the advantage of living at high elevation, they can accelerate the air race with altitude sleeping tents, which can simulate altitude thousands of feet higher than where one actually rests her head.

While Bend sits around 3,600 feet, endless trails and roads that wind through the Deschutes National Forest can approach 7,000 feet, and some Cascade mountains exceed 10,000 feet.

Lewis, who races in both mountain bike and road disciplines, is no stranger to competing at elevation. He has raced in the Tour of Utah and the Crusher in the Tushar. The latter race climbs the state’s Tushar Mountains and rises above 10,000 feet.

Tim Burnett, a kinesiology instructor at OSU-Cascades, said the effect of altitude on the body is very real but often misunderstood. When visiting athletes complain about Bend’s elevation, it’s probably the dry air that is bothering them. By the third or fourth day at altitude, fluid loss caused by drier air can take a cumulative effect on the body, inhibiting its ability to function normally, Burnett said.

“Thirty-five hundred feet isn’t that high,” Burnett added. “One of the problems that people have when they go to higher altitudes, it’s colder, which causes the humidity to drop. Each time you breathe you fully humidify that air. With each breath, you’re now using more fluid (to do so), rather than using that fluid for ­cardiac output or sweating or other uses you would need during a race. So, that (altitude effect) can definitely be problematic.”

While Lewis doesn’t consider the High Cascades 100 a “high race” like some of those in Colorado or Utah, he still took preemptive measures to ward off effects of the Cascades’ altitude.

“It’s a simple idea: Get there as late as physically possible,” Lewis said. “Or, get there two to three weeks in advance. If the race happens on your third, fourth or fifth day in elevation, it’s going to be terrible.”

Burnett agrees with Lewis’ strategy.

Thinner air becomes an issue for most people beginning at 7,500 or 8,000 feet, Burnett said. Air pressure decreases the higher up you go. Low air pressure means there is less oxygen in any given amount of air. Whether someone will feel altitude sickness at the elevation varies from athlete to athlete, he said.

“There are some people who can be up there who don’t feel much and others who feel nauseous,” Burnett said. “There is an inherent ‘some people feel it, some people don’t.’”

‘Live high, train low’

A major refrain that rolls off the tongues of Central Oregon athletes and coaches is, “live high, train low.” That’s to say, sleep at higher elevation causes the body to create more erythropoietin — or EPO — which is a hormone made by the kidneys that promotes the making of red blood cells, which deliver oxygen to muscles.

Training or competing at lower elevations allows you to “get to a higher output. You can do more because of the oxygen,” which is richer, Burnett said.

But athletes can cheat topography without buying a second home in the mountains. Altitude tents let athletes simulate altitude in their own bedrooms. Results begin to appear after three to four weeks of 7- to 9-hour nightly sessions.

“As you simulate (elevation), you create not only EPO but also the maturation of blood stem cells, which require time to mature into red blood cells that can carry oxygen to the muscles,” Burnett said. “You can fake living high when living at sea level.”

Train in Bend, sleep in Vail

Cody Peterson knows his way around an altitude tent. An elite multi-discipline bike racer, Peterson used an altitude tent while preparing for a number of national-level mountain bike races held at elevations beginning at 6,000 feet. To gain an edge, Peterson slid an air mattress into the altitude tent he set up in a guest bedroom.

“They’re hot, and they’re loud,” Peterson said referring to the minifridge-size generator that pumps deoxygenated air into the tent. “I didn’t have the stink problem, but they’re hot, and it’s like sleeping with a vacuum running in the room.”

Peterson, 38, also coaches at Bowen Sports Performance, which rents two altitude tents. In-town rentals cost $400 each month. The studio also ships them all over North America, most recently to Iowa. The customer pays shipping, which is costly because the generator weighs about 60 pounds. The tents can simulate the air pressure 10,000 feet above whatever elevation they’re being used.

“If I’m in Vail (Colorado) in an altitude tent, I’m at the base camp on Everest,” Peterson said. “If I’m at the coast, I’m in Vail.”

Interest in the altitude tents grows each summer before the Leadville Trail 100 MTB, a Colorado mountain bike race that doesn’t dip below 10,000 feet and attracts racers from Bend and all over the country. Bowen Sports Performance also offers an “altitude bar,” which gives customers a super-­dose of thin air by wearing masks attached to a running altitude tent.

“You can get some pretty solid benefits from that, too,” Peterson said.

The elevation spike during the High Cascades 100 didn’t bother Peterson, however, because training and racing at elevations between 3,000 and 6,000 feet and beyond is a matter of fact for Central Oregon athletes. (Peterson finished fourth in the open men category.) Even so, Peterson has a friend who abided by the “train low, sleep high” doctrine so literally that he used to sleep in his vehicle while it was parked halfway up Mount Bachelor at 8,000 feet so he could build his EPO levels.

“Yeah, I’ve heard of people sleeping in vans (in the Mt. Bachelor parking lot),” said Cameron Clark, also a coach at the studio. Mt. Bachelor’s parking lot is close to 5,700 feet. Clark considered sleeping in his car in preparation for the Tour of the Gila, a multi-day bike race in New Mexico, yet thought better of it.

“It was just too much,” Clark said.

Cruising at altitude

Last year, professional cyclist Carl Decker, 43, sold the altitude tent he used for 10 years. The stakes are lower as he ages, he said.

Decker bought it at the beginning of his professional career to give him an edge; only a handful of his racing peers were using altitude tents, he said.

Decker didn’t find the tent intrusive, although the tent was “hot, stinky and sweaty” in the years before he installed a custom air conditioner to cool the air in the tent, which is less breathable than one used for camping.

“It’s more a matter of money and space. It doesn’t interrupt your life that much,” Decker said. “Everything else you do in training is harder; your diet is harder.”

It helps that Decker’s significant other never insisted on having a fancy bedroom, he said. His tent, which he borrowed from a professional triathlete friend, fit over a king-size bed.

“To the uninitiated, it looks like a scene from ‘E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,’” Decker said with a chuckle. The funniest jokes made at the expense of his alpine tent are Decker’s, such as the one about joining the “mile-high club.”

“To someone who knows what’s going on (with altitude tents), it’s interesting and cool,” he added. “Sleeping in an altitude tent isn’t hard, but it does show a level of commitment that not everyone can make.”

As Decker readies for future races without the benefit of the altitude tent, does he feel under prepared?

“A little bit, yeah,” he said.

Bend Bulletin: La Pine Bodybuilder Fueled by Plants

Published: Jan. 6, 2018

Mark Chapman is a professional bodybuilder. The La Pine resident is also a health- and ethics-minded animal lover, which means he fuels his body sculpting solely using plant-based protein.

Put another way — Chapman is vegan.

A retired Orange County police officer, Chapman said he became concerned about what goes into his body when work-related stresses — like when someone randomly attacked his partner with a knife — began causing health issues.

“I was having issues but I didn’t know what from,” he said. His blood pressure rolled like ocean swells, causing frequent and severe migraines. During a 10-year period in which Chapman took a variety of prescribed medications, he began to inventory his diet, deciding what to cut out. In 2000, Mark and his wife, Cheryl Chapman, went vegetarian; in 2007, a year after he took a medical-related retirement from police work, the pair went vegan.

Doing so meant cutting out dairy, such as milk, cheese and yogurt. Going without animal products also meant Chapman no longer needed to take blood pressure medications he’d taken for a decade.

“I don’t miss meat at all,” said Chapman, whose veganism is also inspired by an aversion to factory farming. “To think of eating meat actually makes me feel ill, to be honest. I like to lead by example: If I can be a 50-year-old professional bodybuilder, then apparently you can get enough calories and protein. That I can do it means you can do it, too.”

On a recent morning, Chapman showed off the storage shed next to his home he repurposed as a stand-alone mini gym after moving to La Pine in 2015. Inside, Chapman keeps a variety of free weights and two workout machines. On its walls, he’s pinned posters of inspirational bodybuilders, such as several black-and-white images of a young, grinning Arnold Schwarzenegger, striking a variety of poses. He also keeps photos of Frank Zane another classic bodybuilder, whose height — 5-foot-9 — is more akin to Chapman, who is 5-foot-7.

“I was always big into the bodybuilding era of the 1970s, the Arnold Schwarzenegger days. I always like that physique more, that classic body shape,” Chapman said, adding with careful wording: “Not the overly built people who are on too many pharmaceuticals.”

What distinguishes Chapman — beyond his swollen biceps — is his diet, which provides him ample calories, although he doesn’t count them. He takes in 140 to 150 grams of plant-based protein each day — which would take about 1.3 pounds of meat to deliver. The Chapmans source their diet from everyday grocers such as Fred Meyer and Food4Less, where they spend a total of $200 each month. They avoid many processed vegan options — such as meatless hamburgers — for whole food options. Black beans and quinoa pack nicely into patties. They don’t eat much tofu, although they make an imitation jerky from its slabs. The Chapmans’ main protein source is seitan — pronounced SAY-ton — a wheat gluten. After adding spices and cooking, it acquires “an almost chicken-like texture,” Chapman said. Beans and legumes round out their staples, yet Chapman weans himself off those — and chocolate, a singular indulgence — when he’s cutting weight during bodybuilding season, which typically ranges from March to November.

On Chapman’s 49th birthday, he promised himself he would begin competing in bodybuilding by the time he was 50. Weightlifting kept him in shape throughout his law enforcement career.

“(Weightlifting) has been a lifelong thing,” Chapman said. He first glimpsed weightlifting and bodybuilding when he and his brother would tag along with their father to the gym. While he’d lift weights, the boys would monkey around with the “belt jiggler” machines.

As a teenager growing up in Southern California in the 1970s, Chapman began working out in earnest, frequenting gyms synonymous with bodybuilding’s heyday, such as the original Gold’s Gym. Now in retirement, Chapman intends to compete in bodybuilding for another decade. “It takes years to build your physique to have it be the way you want it,” he said.

For Chapman, that means chiseling his calves, thighs and latissimus dorsi or “lats,” a long, flat back muscle.

Last May, he participated in his first bodybuilding competition in the Pacific Coast Championships in Lincoln City, organized by the National Physique Committee, bodybuilding’s governing entity in the U.S. He placed fifth in Masters, a category pertaining to men 50 years and older, and second in the Open Lightweight Bodybuilding category — anybody under 154 pounds. For contests, Chapman now weighs in at 152 or 153. He weighed 147 at his first show because he dieted too much.

Chapman also competed in the Bend-based Cascadian Classic in May. He entered in three categories, placing second in both Masters Men’s Physique and Open Lightweight Bodybuilding and fourth in Masters Mens Bodybuilding. Women’s categories range from the traditional bodybuilding category to those dedicated to the Fitness Figure, Bikini and Women’s Physiques.

Chapman said he is often asked by bodybuilders and members of the public: Where do you get your protein?

“When I go out there and compete and actually win over meat-eating bodybuilders, maybe people will start to wake up and realize that I get plenty of protein from a plant-based diet,” Chapman said.

“What people don’t want to admit is that all protein comes from plants. Animals don’t make their own protein. Cows get their protein by eating grass and grains. They convert that through an amino acid change into protein. People just have to realize they can remove the middleman.”

While veganism is still a fringe diet in bodybuilding, Dominic Current, who directs the Cascadian Classic with his wife, said meatless diets do work for some bodybuilders.

“(Vegans) are starting to show up more and more in shows. Maybe not in the bodybuilding class, but it the men’s physiques class, which (features) smaller, more ‘Men’s Health’ cover type physiques,” said Current, 42, a bodybuilder and owner of Max Muscle Sports Nutrition in Bend. “Mark is kind of an anomaly (in that) he’s competing in the body building category” against competitors who source their protein from meat, he said. However, a competitor’s diet — along with name and back story — is irrelevant in the judges’ evaluations.

The Cascadian Classic, which will be held on May 26 in Bend, attracts around 300 competitors each year; 30 to 50 of them live in Central Oregon.

Beyond Chapman, Current said he can think of only one other vegan competitor who entered in the classic and men’s physique divisions, although female vegans factored into the bikini field.

While Current is an enthusiastic meat-eater, he said he considers veganism more than a niche diet like the Atkins or Keto, for example.

“It’s much more of a lifestyle. I can see more and more people going that direction,” Current said. “The only downside is when you’re in a sport where you’re being judged on muscularity and conditioning and some other factors, it’s going to be hard for a typical vegan to compete against somebody that does have a higher protein diet through animal meat.”

Chapman has heard it all before. He encourages those interested in veganism to try it for a month.

Those suspicious of Chapman’s devotion to a plant-based diet are tempted to hunt for examples of rule-breaking, such as the sand-colored combat boots he wears, which look suspiciously like suede.

“Nope, they’re synthetic,” Chapman said with a laugh. “I do check all that.”

The Chapmans’ chihuahua mixes — Katie and Missy — are also vegan. They eat a meatless kibble called V-Dog, which the Chapmans buy online. Main ingredients include peas, pea protein, brown rice and oatmeal, according to the California company’s website. The Chapmans’ previous chihuahuas, which they also raised vegan, lived to be 15 years old.

People looking hard enough will find two exceptions to veganism at the Chapmans’: the meat-based food they feed their cat and Mark’s wallet — his sole leather accessory — which conceals his sergeant’s badge.

“You can’t get a badge wallet that isn’t leather. I searched all over the place,” he said with a chuckle. “Not even faux leather.”

Bend Bulletin: Central Oregon’s Favorite Sports Take a Toll on Shoulders

Published: Nov. 2, 2018

Elite multisport athlete ­Sarah Max was competing in a multiday mountain bike race in Colorado when a competitor jockeying for position clipped her handlebars. Max crashed onto her shoulder with almost all of her body weight. She felt a pop. She completed that day’s race stage before being checked out by some doctor friends, rallying to snag second place overall among women in the Breck Epic three-day race.

A physical therapist friend recommended she have an MRI, which looks at the body’s tissues, taken of her shoulder. But she postponed it, and a crash at a subsequent mountain bike race hastened her decision. Another friend, who damaged his shoulder in a car accident, told Max she was delaying the inevitable.

“He was right — I didn’t want this to be this kind of thing that just nags at me,” Max said.

Shoulder injuries are common among those who live active, outdoor lifestyles in Central Oregon. Rips in the shoulder joint’s stabilizing cartilage and muscles are often caused by mountain biking in the warmer months and skiing and snowboarding during the winter. Shoulder injuries are highest March through July due to overuse during baseball season when unconditioned people start throwing baseballs and softballs.

General aging is another culprit. An old injury that’s caused long-term nagging pain can turn into a torn rotator cuff when people hit their 40s. But that doesn’t mean they need to go under the knife, said Nick Hagen, a clinic manager and physical therapist at Rebound Physical Therapy.

Max, 43, followed her friend’s advice. The MRI showed the crash ripped her labrum — a stabilizing cartilage cup in the shoulder joint. It also showed that her rotator cuff — four muscles that help keep the head of the humerus in the socket — was damaged by the crash.

“I had the MRI on a Tuesday, saw the surgeon on Friday, and I had surgery the following Thursday,” Max said. “Once I knew what was wrong, I just wanted to get it taken care of as quickly as possible.”

A torn rotator cuff and a true dislocation are the two cases in which surgery is highly recommended, Hagen said. Outside of those worst-case scenarios, even rotator cuff tears, cartilage issues and general shoulder pain can be rehabilitated with physical therapy.

“If I took an MRI of 10 people, maybe seven would have a labral issue, but that doesn’t mean they need surgery,” Hagen said. “Sometimes the diagnosis can make it sound worse than it is.”

Max, who is a four-time female winner of the Pole Pedal Paddle, said she had a positive outlook regarding the short-term impact that her shoulder surgery would have on her daily routine.

“I had been doing sports all my life,” she said. “At some point, your time is up. And I had a really fun summer. I got to ride my bike a lot.”

Riding her bike included Max’s two fifth-place finishes among women at Rebecca’s Private Idaho, a multiday mountain bike race near Ketchum on Labor Day weekend. After surgery, Max wore her arm in a sling fitted with a supportive wedge for a month. She slept propped up in bed on a mountain of pillows. Friends worried that Max would “go crazy” not being able to do the sports she loves.

“Yes, I’m beginning to get excited about getting on a bike again and skiing and running,” Max said. “I’ve been riding my trainer, sweating a little bit, taking some spin classes and walking around a lot. … It’s actually been great.”

While Max now spends most of the day free of the sling, she still wears it at night.

She attends physical therapy several times a week to regain motion in a shoulder that now feels very stable.

Paying the piper

Bend resident James Williams, 38, knows the agony of shoulder dislocations. As a teenager he developed a click in his right shoulder while whitewater kayaking near his native Chattanooga, Tennessee. One day, in trying to keep up with more-­advanced friends in a rain-swollen creek, Williams popped his shoulder out of its socket by frantically paddling his way out from beneath an undercut rock where he was stuck.

“The force of me trying to roll put my shoulder into my arm pit,” said Williams, who swam to shore. His friends were able to reinsert his shoulder.

“It hurts,” he said. “It’s a traumatic sensation knowing that a major joint is so far out of place.”

From then on, Williams would pop it out by innocuous things like sneezing or reclining while propped up on one arm. “I have six high school buddies who are very keenly aware of how to put a shoulder back in,” he said with a chuckle. Subsequent dislocations forced Williams to give up kayaking in college. He sought an orthopedic surgeon known for working on the joints of professional athletes Nolan Ryan and Bo Jackson. During rehabilitation, he caught the cycling bug — and has since become an elite cyclist. But Williams, a former Bulletin sports reporter who teaches English at Summit High School, subsequently messed up his other shoulder since moving to Bend in 2006. While nordic skiing at Dutchman Flat Sno-park, he zipped down a hill past a friend before crashing into a snow bank, dislocating his left shoulder.

“As painful as (a shoulder dislocation is), the implications are more painful,” Williams said. “Knowing that it means surgery and … months of inactivity and rehab. That would really get me down when it would happen.”

Williams’ bike racing friends pointed him toward Michael Ryan, an orthopedic surgeon at Desert Orthopedics. Lying on the operating table, Williams gave his doctor some words of encouragement before being cut into.

“The last thing I remember was trying to focus on him through the haze of the knockout drugs and I said, ‘Dr. Ryan, just tighten the s--- out of it for me,’” Williams said with a laugh. “And he did.”

‘Kind of a blessing’

Anne Linton, 56, knows her way around a serious shoulder injury. During her two-decade career as a physician, her specialties included emergency medicine and orthopedics. A lifelong multisport athlete, Linton has been on both the diagnostic and receiving ends of traumatic injury.

While riding a bike to work at a hospital in Boise, Idaho, in 1997, Linton was struck by a motorist. The collision partially tore her rotator cuff and broke her hand.

The injuries required a year of rehabilitation, after which she received surgery to alleviate an impingement in her shoulder. Linton stopped playing tennis and picked up triathlons, competing in an Ironman and others of varying distances. She switched to bike racing when a knee injury made running unfeasible in 2009. In 2016, Linton volunteered at the High Cascades 100, a 100-mile mountain bike race in the Deschutes National Forest, as a sweeper. She raced it twice. But a physical therapist told her to take it easy after returning from her third knee surgery in 2014. Cruising on her mountain bike to clear the last half of the course of any lost or injured racers, Linton she slid out on pine needles near Mt. Bachelor and crashed.

“My shoulder didn’t dislocate. Something just ripped,” said Linton, who “shook it out” before she rode the last of the course. When she tried to help pull up course markings, however, she couldn’t raise her arm. An MRI showed that Linton severed her supraspinatus — one of the four muscles in the rotator cuff. She put herself under the surgeon’s knife within a week.

“Waking up post-op was the worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life,” said Linton, placing it somewhere between a nine and a 10 on the pain scale. “But I haven’t had children, though — I will be honest.”

Linton, who owns and operates Anne Linton Coaching, has assumed a second career as a personal trainer to a stable of cyclists, runners and triathletes. She also teaches spin classes at the Athletic Club of Bend several times a week each winter. One or two participants inevitably have an arm in a sling or cast — an uncomfortable situation Linton is no stranger to.

“In reality, it’s OK,” said Linton, adding that it’s a good idea to bring an extra sling to replace the one that gets covered in sweat. “You can really get in quality training and be very focused. You can also work on your core strength and other areas of your body to help your cycling. … (A shoulder injury) is kind of a blessing.”