So, I’m down in Sierra Vista, Arizona for a week. And life is good.
All that crap you hear about “a dry heat”? Well, it’s true. 90 degrees up here in the high desert is way different from 90 degrees at the coast. That “evaporation” thing that scientists talk about? It really does carry off a ton of heat.
I’d thought I was adjusting well to the altitude – running and biking haven’t been an issue, but I went to hit the post pool at lunch today. Running and cycling – I dunno, I suppose I’m either slowing down or just breathing faster – but moving about the same rate. Being three orders of magnitude higher than my usual average altitude doesn’t matter much.
Swimming, though – two strokes between breaths is two strokes between breaths regardless of how dense the air I suck into my lungs is. Wow, it killed me. Five laps was a stretch, and I was breathing every stroke near the end of most laps.
The pool was nice – at noon they kept the sliders to the outside open, so there was tons of air moving across the surface of the water. That evaporation was working again, and the top inch or two of the pool were frigid. The rest was great, just absolutely great, other than feeling like i had no air in my lungs.
I’ve rented a mountain bike; will write about that later. The short is that riding out here is like riding on the East Coast, ‘cept instead of series of rollers, there’s one huge climb followed by a roller coaster ride. Excellent.