Altitude Adjustment

The weekend in Denver, Colorado was a mixed bag.  The mixed experience was partially my fault for not planning better and for simply being an ignorant Californian. 

View of downtown Denver from the Museum of Nature and Science


As an ignorant Californian, I had expected Colorado to be this wonderful outdoors state where everyone looked like Lance Armstrong and Ryan Hall and ate natural fresh foods.  I had read about the fast runners from University of Colorado at Boulder in Running with the Buffaloes: A Season Inside with Mark Wetmore, Adam Goucher, and the University of Colorado Men's Cross Country Team and had expected to see elite national team runners training on the roads. 

There are definitely parts of Colorado where I might see elite runners whiz by, but Denver was not one of them.  We went to some of the usual tourist spots in Denver--16th Street Mall and Denver Museum of Nature and Science.  16th Street Mall was no more than a trashier version of Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade.  The museum, however, was a better and larger version of Berkeley's Lawernce Hall of Science, and even the Princess had fun for the most part, crawling about the exhibits.

The Princess crawling next to the wildlife exhibit

I had also been excited for the weekend because we were actually staying in Aurora, Colorado, right next to Cherry Creek State Park.  When you say "State Park," I automatically picture forests of redwood trees (think Muir Woods National Monument) or mountains and waterfalls (think Yosemite).

Cherry Creek State Park looked nothing like what I had imagined.  Bordered by a highway, the park consisted of a lake and flat, dry grassland and marshland.  To be honest, the landscape was somewhat disappointing; it looked almost like the yellow rolling hills occupied with cows that you can find almost anywhere in California. 

There were, however, paved trails throughout the park, and my husband and I were determined to use this opportunity to get a run in.  Pushing the Princess in her royal chariot (a total of 40 pounds, including the backpack tucked in the stroller), we started to run.  For the first 15 minutes, I felt like crap.  My legs felt heavy and I just felt SLOW.  We also had to remember that Denver is called "Mile High City" for a reason--Denver has an elevation of 5,280ft, exactly one mile.  Up this high, there is less oxygen and the sun shines brighter, more white than yellow.

We ran for about 45 minutes on this never-ending paved trail before stopping to look at a map.  Instead of running a loop around the lake, we had run directly south east, away from the lake.  There was no way we would be able to loop the lake without running at least a half marathon.  And we were in no way prepared to run that far.  Running in the middle of a warm day and with only a 12oz Dasani bottle of water, we were already tired by the time we decided to turn around and double back. 

Map of Cherry Creek Park and our there-and-back run

The run back was really a slow race against time and heat.  We did manage to make it back relatively intact, suffering only from mild heat exhaustion and dehydration.  The Princess slept most of the time and was only slightly sunburnt.  We were pretty dumb and lucky.  We should have been more prepared with more water and looked more closely at the trail map before running.  We probably should not have chosen a long run to be our first workout at such a high altitude. 

It has been two days since we arrived, and I think I am still trying to adjust to the altitude.