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July 17, 2006
High Altitude Training and Wheat Cakes
I tested my aerobic capicity today by going for a short (very short) run on top of this mountain I'm on. I hear it's about 1200 ft high here in Colorado. The first day I arrived I could definitely tell a difference as I carried my luggage up two flights of stairs. At first I thought it was because I stuffed way too much (shoes mainly) into my two carry-on bags (wouldn't want to waste precious time by actually checking a bag). Then...I remembered the whole altitude thing. I'll admit, I felt a little nausea, short-of-breath and decreased appetite the first 2 days. I did quite a bit of walking around and exploring (16,000 steps worth to be exact!) and could notice a difference. So, with 2.5 days of acclimation under my belt, I decided to give jogging a try. I walked a little to warm up, jogged for 10 mins and then walked another 3 miles to the next village and back.
Even though I haven't actually been running for almost two months, I have stil done aerobic-type exercises. The jog felt a little slow, a little belabored and...kind of gross but I had an enormous amount of saliva production to the point I was spitting every 10 seconds! Just a side note, I learned at my conference that we produce antibodies (IgA) in our saliva which help protect us from bacteria and infections. After hard exercise, these antibodies decrease and this is a possible reason why training (say, for a marathon) can increase your risk for upper-respiratory tract infections (something I had for a good part of my marathon training). Anyway, I had to share my first high altitude training session with you. Wish I had time to stay here and build up my endurance - just to see what it's like when I return to sea level.
After my run, I explored a new eatery in town, Sunshine Cafe. I ordered the Wheat Cakes. These are not your ordinary pancakes (which they also have on the menu). These are actually baked, wheat-based, grainy, very thick cake-type pancakes. I got mine with bananas and walnuts on top. Very good! Grainy, thick and tastey.
Posted by Lisa at July 17, 2006 06:44 PM
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