These past two days of

These past two days of running have been maybe the two most difficult runs of my life. Is there such a thing as altitude-induced asthma? Today when I walked back into the condo, I don’t think I was audibly wheezing, but it felt like it. Deep breaths made me cough a bit. I realized that while I was breathing hard, my breathing was also very shallow.

I feel better now, after a shower and a sit. I ran what I estimate, via Google Pedometer and its not-so-good map and satellite imagery of Keystone, to be about 5 miles. It took me 57 minutes, which actually isn’t that bad! That’s about 11:30/mile pace. At 9,300 feet! Amazing. I could be overestimating slightly, but I really think 5 miles is pretty close. Maybe 4.8-4.9. Damn Google Pedometer — why don’t they have higher res imagery? 🙂 No matter how you slice it, I definitely went a little faster than yesterday, so that’s good.

Keystone slopes down from end to end. I’m at the higher end, which is at 9,300 feet. I started out running down the valley in a 10/1 run/walk pattern until my watch read 27 minutes. (That’d be 25 minutes of running and 2 minutes of walking so far.) I wanted to run for an hour total, so at that point I decided to turn around, figuring it would take me quite a bit longer to run back uphill. I think I lost about 150 feet of elevation in total before heading back uphill, which sucked. Still, I made it back to the condo quicker than I expected — 30 minutes! (Or, 27 minutes of running and 3 minutes of walking.)

I may not run tomorrow, since Rich and I are planning to go mountain biking. You can take a bike to the top via the chair lift, and ride down. Should be really fun.