I don't have any idea how long it takes to acclimatize to a higher elevation and I am also not at a massive elevation either.
I am about 1.5 km above my normal sea level in Chicago and the tradeoffs about temperature and humidity sort of balanced out the increase in difficulty that I experienced from the air being thinner if that is even at thing at 1500 meters.
The good news is that by the time I get back home we start to enter the best time of year where I live as far as running outdoors is concerned because the weather starts to turn to cooler in October. Then we get about 6 weeks of that before it becomes bitterly cold. Honestly, I don't know why I continue to live in Chicago. So much about it absolutely sucks.
I barely looked at my watch this time around and instead just waited for it to vibrate when it indicates i've done a km. I was instead just listening to my body and because of the reduced heat and humidity, I never really felt tired.
I will say this though, the first 10 minutes are pretty rough as my body muscles seem to negotiate with my heart and lungs about whether or not they want to participate in this action.
I never really felt worn down during this whereas when I am running in Chicago, especially in the middle of the day, I frequently check the watch to see how much further I have to go to get to my goals. In that regard the people up here have a great advantage over the people running where it is seriously hot and humid like me, on a normal day.
I had previously aimed for staying out of zone 4 as far as BPM is concerned but this time I just listened to my body and my body was saying "no problem, keep going!" and I guess that is a good thing. It is much easier to really hate physical activity when you feel like you are doing it in a pressure cooker.
not once did I look at my pace while I was running and in the end, I am pretty impressed with my overall per km pace. This makes me feel hopeful for when I am back at sea level and the temp isn't so crazy back in my own city.
something else I really enjoyed was that there wasn't a million other people vying for my little bit of running space up here in the small city where I was visiting. In fact, I only ever encountered another runner a single time while I was here.
It's time to go back though and probably face the reality of how each place has their pros and cons about how runnable the area is.
Its been interesting exploring this different elevation though because this is the first time in my life that I have been fairly dedicated to cardio in my entire fitness adventure.
Have you ever experienced running at different elevations? Let's talk about it.