Altitude adjustment

I lived 45 minutes north of here in Fort Collins for two years while going to graduate school at CSU, and I never really thought it through before, but I guess Fort Collins is much lower than Denver because I don't recall having any altitude adjustment issues when I moved there.  But here in the Mile High City, oh my lord, I can hardly breathe.  If I'm walking and want to take a deep breath, I have to stop walking and really concentrate, and I'm not always successful in my attempt to get a full one. If I forget to stop and take deep breaths every block or so, I start to feel as though I visited one of the previously mentioned dispensaries -- a little head rush and a little fuzzy brain syndrome kicks in. It's been tough to keep up with my workouts because it's pretty hard to workout when you can't breathe. So, I'm just sticking to hours-long walks, deep motionless breaths and 5 minute bursts of strength training with my resistance band.  I thought it would take just a few days to adjust, but someone told me it will really take a couple of weeks. We have some hikes planned for the end of next week, so I'm working on mind over matter and plan to adjust by then.

On Wednesday, one of my walks led me to one of the capoeira schools here, Capoeira Canto do Galo.  Their batizado is this weekend, so they have all kinds of special guests in town, including Mestre Acordeon.  I watched a kid's class in which the kids worked on Mestre Bimba's sequencias and was amazed that the kid's class was taught just like an adult's class.   No games, no animal movements, just line facing front doing the movements.  I prefer the style of interacting with kids that I've learned from Mestre Foca and Instrutora Rouxinol, which is more fun for student and teacher, but was also impressed with the strict approach taken here,   Mestre Galo invited me to participate in their workshops taking place today, as well as a dance class and open roda.  So, as long as I can breathe, I'm going to go check it out, if only for the opportunity to train in the vicinity of a legend like Acordeon. I'm also starving for the sound of spoken Portuguese, so I'm looking forward to this afternoon. 

I hope all of my New York friends are beating the heat.  As for me, I had to get up to close the windows last night because it was too cool!  Ahhhhhhh.