Tracking Stats

As I mentioned earlier, Peter has a Garmin watch that he's used to track his training (distances, speed, elevation gain/loss). It also keeps track of his vitals. While he's in Nepal, I've actually been logging in to his account to watch how his body has responded. It isn't a medical-grade device, but still, I find the data pretty interesting. 

From Garmin: Pulse oximetry (“Pulse Ox”) is a method of measuring the oxygen level in your blood. Your device determines your blood oxygen level by shining light into the skin and measuring how much light is absorbed. Since it examines blood oxygen in smaller (peripheral) vessels in your skin, it’s referred to as peripheral oxygen saturation or SpO₂. Knowing your SpO₂ levels while awake or asleep can be a valuable measurement of overall health and well-being. If you participate in alpine sports or expeditions at high elevation, SpO₂ levels can help you determine how your body is acclimating to altitude. As altitude increases, the level of oxygen in your blood can decrease.

This chart shows his oxygen level and charts it against his elevation. Very telling. I scrolled through the data for the past several months. With one exception his SpO2 has been in the green zone (the goal) every day: that one exception was when he was on the summit of South Sister (10,300 ft). You can see that since he's been in Namche Bazaar (11,000+ ft), he's been in the yellow zone (i.e., getting less oxygen) when he's been moving around. (The gray in the bottom of the chart is showing elevation.)