Endless Winter

As if winter has not been long enough, a trip to a ski travel conference in Vail, CO clearly was not the best choice to finally get a bout of the spring fever. On the first day out, instead of a few hours of spring skiing, I was deep into fresh powder, battling the mountain and bad visibility. Most of the time, though, I was working and preparing for a presentation. What was most striking though, was how much the high elevation troubled me. At almost 9.000 feet, and skiing up to 11.500 I had trouble sleeping, getting headaches and ran out of breath fairly easy running up some stairs or so. Though I have been to Vail a few times before, this was the first time the elevation had bothered me that much. Suffice to say that, besides a few hours of hard skiing, I did nothing else in terms of training.