When I watch TV and see athletes, I’m blown away.
In my world, a marathon is a slow walk to the local convenience store for an ice cold soft drink & a microwave burrito that may have been resting on the grimy shelf since the Clinton administration.
My gastronomical self-insults are one of our many poor habits, but I still intensely admire those Kenyan long-distance runners. Their well-known secret is that they live & train every day in the higher elevations of Kenya where the air is thinner, & they can more readily condition their lungs. Sea level air is like enriched rocket fuel to them after that experience. That got myself and others to think about how Heating, Ventilation, & A/C units potentially operate in high elevations like Kenya or more reasonable locations like the mountains of CO. It turns out there is a significant difference, according to my favorite HVAC blog. We all guess that people living in lower elevations will struggle a great deal to get enough oxygen when they visit places with rarified mountain air. The A/C component of your central HVAC system does not need oxygen however will need to task harder every day to draw in a greater volume of less dense air. Mountainous areas definitely tend to be cool, so this is not a big problem. The larger issue, I heard, with an Heating, Ventilation, & A/C system is with gas-powered gas gas furnaces that actually require oxygen to burn. If the ratio of oxygen to gas falls too low, suddenly the partially burned gas fuel can cause a buildup of carbon monoxide. This can have fatal consequences in tiny spaces with terrible ventilation. If you live in a high-altitude area, call your HVAC tech for help.