For the last three years, I’ve come to Denver once a year in Q1 for work. The last two years, it has been for my company’s annual sales and success kickoff. This year, it’s for my company’s go-to-market value selling workshops. We’ve always been based in downtown Denver for these events, and so it’s given me time to walk around and see what’s here, especially since the last time I was here was in November 2012 with Chris. The first year I came for work in 2023, I walked up and down downtown, and it was like a ghost town. It didn’t matter if it was peak lunch time or around early dinner time/get-off-work time, but I barely saw anyone on the streets. It felt pretty eerie. Last year when I came, there was a bit more life. I definitely wasn’t totally alone, but it was still quiet. This year as I’ve walked the streets in the morning and during lunch time, it actually felt like a semi-busy downtown. I saw lots of people having coffee, at cafes, grabbing lunch with colleagues, coming in and out of office buildings.

I always make sure to do morning workouts while traveling for work and stick with my usual exercise routine as much as possible, so I brought my workout gear. This morning, I went up to the top floor gym, where the hotel had a large, separate yoga room that was flooded with natural light. Although I do a semi-rigorous workout every weekday, which consists about 30-40 minutes of cardio and 30-40 minutes of strength/pilates/barre, here, I could actually feel that I was “mile high.” The last two years, I didn’t feel the altitude, but this year, I was breathing much harder on the treadmill and sweating buckets more than I normally do. Denver is 5,200+ feet above sea level, so it makes sense that my body was working harder than it normally does.

As my colleague said, we should take it all in stride: our workouts are more efficient here! If we workout for 60 minutes at higher altitude, that’s like 120 minutes at sea level, so we’re doing our bodies a favor! I suppose that’s one way to be positive.