Want to breathe with unconstrained lungs, cruise over hills as if they were pesky speed bumps, and shave down your PR? Then you’ll need to in thin mountain air. Although there’s no conclusive sweet spot for optimal elevation training, that athletes live between 7,000 and 8,000 feet above sea level. Sparse oxygen at such altitude forces your body to increase its number of red blood cells, thus increasing the amount of oxygen delivered to muscles during exercise and improving performance.

Want to train at altitude? Head for the red.

High

Over 5,000 feet

Lately, some of the best runners in the country have been traveling abroad for their stints at altitude. said he trained for a month at around 6,000 feet in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, leading up to the 2014 indoor track national championships. , Sara, flew to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to run at 7,000 feet in preparation for this year’s Boston Marathon.  (elevation 7,900), for the same race.

But there are plenty of high altitude destinations stateside. Flatlanders ought to be cautious when traveling any of these places—and not just because of the lack of oxygen. Visitors often become residents.  moved to Boulder, Colorado, in 1970 to prepare for the 1972 Munich Olympics, and Boulderites still see him on area trails.

Here are ten of our favorite places to run at altitude, from high to higher:

Bozeman, Montana

Elevation: 4,816 feet
 is one of the few elite runners who trains in this southwest Montana college town, which boasts 67 miles of trails in its Main Street to Mountains trail system. Kimball’s favorite run is the Bangtail Divide trail, but if you’re looking for more options, check out the local running club, . Beginning in late April, hook up with the group for its weekly around town and in the surrounding hills. The adventurous ought to traverse the Bridger Ridge: 20 miles of singletrack that weaves over boulders and talus fields before reaching Sacagawea peak at just more than 9,600 feet.

Such a strenuous run requires a thick, juicy steak. Luckily, there are nearly three Montana cows for every Montanan. Although not in Bozeman, is a half hour drive away in Manhattan, Montana, and serves some of the finest steaks in the West.

Albuquerque, New Mexico

Elevation: 4,954 feet
New Mexico is not widely known for its lofty peaks, but Albuquerque is the best kept secret above 4,000 feet. , a professional running group based in Seattle, has sought high-altitude training and refuge from the dreary Pacific Northwest weather in ABQ every winter for the past two years.

The less intense  offer training runs and races throughout the year. Roadies can wave to the polar bears at each May, and trail runners can climb to the top of 10,678-foot Sandia Peak each August during the infamous nine-mile .

For those who subscribe to the sleep high, train low philosophy, the Duke City is ideal. The sprawling city reaches 6,500 feet in the foothills of the Sandia Mountains and dips down to 4,500 feet near the city center, which is also where you’ll find the  .The paved, multi-use path parallels Rio Grande River for 16 miles—perfect for marathoners in search of a flat, semi-shady route for their long runs.

According to Beasts coach Danny Mackey, is his runners’ favorite eatery. The New Mexican restaurant opened in the early 1960s and is said to serve the best red chili in town.

Boulder, Colorado

Elevation: 5,272 feet
In Boulder, runners can get their Rocky Mountain highs without being sequestered in the wilderness like a monk. After all, the town is home to , the largest 10K in the country with more than 50,000 runners crossing the finish line each May.

If you prefer dirt, hit the trails (likely within distance of your front door), or drive a half hour to , which starts above 8,000 feet. This 20-mile roller coaster of pain and anguish is considered a proving ground by those who have read about it in , Chris Lear’s inside look at the University of Colorado’s 1998 cross-country team.

In the evening, hang out on downtown Boulder’s . The bars and street performers on the pedestrian mall’s red bricks keep the after-dark scene thriving. , a greasy-spoon diner adorned with autographs from Olympians and national champions, is a popular breakfast destination for those recovering from a long run—or a hangover.

Mount Laguna, California

Elevation: 5,987 feet
One hour east of San Diego in the Cleveland National Forest, Laguna Mountain enjoys cooler temps than one would expect from Southern California. Loaded with trails—the Big Laguna, Noble Canyon, Indian Creek, Pine Mountain, and Pacific Crest, to name a few—the area offers miles of rolling singletrack through classic California chaparrel, streamside meadows, and forests overlooking the Anza-Borrego Desert.

Distance runners should check out the (which will hopefully happen in 2014; organizers cancelled the 2013 race due wildfires). Ultrarunners should consider the , which—like the marathon—takes you to the top of the mountain and then some (last year’s finishers took between 17 and 31 hours to finish the race).

The rustic houses visitors right in the national forest. Many of the 17 cabins are also pet-friendly—perfect for trail runners who travel with their pooches. Campsites are also available throughout the national forest.

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Elevation: 6,322 feet
Mention training in Colorado Springs and most people think of the Olympic Training Center. The flagship facility of the U.S. Olympic Committee boasts two Olympic size swimming pools, six gymnasiums, and the largest indoor shooting facilities in the Western Hemisphere, but these amenities don’t always appeal to runners.

Runners will enjoy easy access to  and/or the 260 miles of multisport trails available within a ten-mile radius. Fifteen minutes away at the base of 14,117-foot Pikes Peak is a trail where running close to 16 minutes per mile would make you world famous. Called the Manitou Incline, the trail shoots up 2,000 feet in about 5,200 feet. Dominant high-altitude  leads long runs up the trail every Sunday with the .

The 13.32-mile , held each August, also offers runners a chance to test their climbing en route from 6,300-foot Manitou Springs to the top of the mountain. If you really want to destroy your legs, opt for the 26.2-mile Pikes Peak Marathon.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Elevation: 6,818 feet
Although some American distance runners travel to train in Iten, the high-altitude running epicenter of Kenya, some Kenyan-born runners live at around 7,000 feet in foothills of Santa Fe, about an hour outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Seven Kenyan born athletes with top-ten marathon finishes are on the roster, such Andrew Musuva, a Grandma’s Marathon Champion, and Jonathan Ndambuki, a 2:10 marathoner.

A spider-web of interconnected singletrack, known as the , loops through the rolling piñon and juniper-covered foothills of the City Different for more than 20 miles. The 17-mile Railtrail is a flatter option, which turns to dirt three miles from town and offers mountain views in every direction. The , the local (non-Kenyan) running club, offer weekend runs in both locations, as well as in-town circuits on Thursday nights and a variety of races throughout the year.

A serious desert runner is best refueld at . Order the protein-rich buffalo burger: a patty from local Bosque farms on a brioche bun with garlic mayo and hand-cut fries.

Flagstaff, Arizona

Elevation: 6,834 feet
One of the coolest high-altitude destinations, this high and dry city suffers none of the squelching heat that has caused Arizona to pass on an extra hour of sunshine during Daylight Savings Time. For most of the year, a blur resembling can be seen zooming over evergreen shaded dirt roads. also spent two months here in preparation for the 2014 Boston Marathon, focusing on base building and high mileage along Lake Mary Road.

The ambitious and the foolhardy ought to explore the trails around Arizona Snowbowl Ski Resort. The annual seven-mile in July hands out prizes for the overall winners, the fastest first mile, and for the first runner to eat a burger at mile six and still cross the finish line.

Locals say , a convenience store complete with a beer, wine, and espresso bar,Ìýis the best spot for a post-run beverage.

Mancos, Colorado

Elevation: 7,027 feet
Tucked away in the southwest corner of Colorado with a population of fewer than 1,400, Mancos offers something seldom found in Boulder or Colorado Springs: solitude. “You won’t see anyone on the trails except our athletes, which is remarkable that still exists in Colorado,” said Ben Hahn, founder of  running club. Stay at the club’s 8,000-foot-high altitude training center where residents are served organic meals cooked with ingredients grown, picked, or slaughtered within 100 miles.

“Being out here—running through the trails, through the woods, seeing some animal life—it’s a lot different than home, where I see a lot of cars and have to worry about traffic,” says marathoner Ryan McGuire. “I can just get lost in my runs out here and focus on my training.”

Despite being off the beaten path, the nearby San Juan Mountains have plenty of places to run, including nearby . Or, buy some inner tubes from the town’s gas station and float the lazy Dolores River.

Park City, Utah

Elevation: 7,034 feet
Park City is world-famous for its three ski resorts (,Ìý, and the ), but the mountain town also has more than 350 miles of scenic, well-maintained mountain tracks close to town and in the surrounding Wasatch Range. Although some trails have double-black diamond ratings, a beginner-friendly place to start exploring is , 694 acres of contiguous open space that boasts more than 30 miles of high-desert trails. For company, seek out ,Ìýwho assemble weekly for runs ten miles and longer. To hammer out a faster tempo run, there’s : a dirt highway that starts up Emigration Canyon and never dips below 6,000 feet. The scenery would take your breath away if the elevation didn’t take it first.

Mammoth Lakes, California

Elevation: 7,880 feet
Five hours north of Los Angeles, this resort town is a mecca for skiers and snowboarders riding down the mountains and runners shuffling up them. Since 2001, the has been churning out record holders, such as four-time Olympic marathon trials qualifier and the current U.S. 50K record . His favorite loop? A winding odyssey of Mammoth starting at Shady Rest Park and ending with a dip in the cool creek at .

Olympic marathoner Deena Kastor, who earned bronze at the 2004 Athens Games, also lives and trains in Mammoth. “The altitude has surely had a positive effect on my training,” , “but the benefits have also come on a psychological level as well. Being at altitude means simplicity, athleticism, focus,  camaraderie and being lured down another trail I’ve never happened to see before. The grandness of the scenery has offered me the grand goals I keep chasing.”

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No human knew about the 4.8 magnitude earthquake that shook the northern part of Yellowstone National Park on Sunday until it happened at 6:34 a.m., but some on Twitter and YouTube say that a group of bison in the park sensed it weeks before and fled.

Did this herd running down the highway away from Mammoth Hot Springs know something we didn’t? The that it had detected at least 25 minor earthquakes in the park since Thursday, and the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory has been tracking an area of recent uplift for seven months. 

Jake Lowenstern, scientist in charge of the Yellowstone Volcano Observatory, says not to be fooled. He has yet to see any conclusive research that animals can predict earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.

“I have seen some of the YouTube videos,” Lowenstern said. “However, I don’t find them very convincing. Some do not appear to have been filmed recently. But even if the footage is new, anyone who has spent time at Yellowstone has seen bison running along the roads … into the park, out of the park, and within the park. A horn honking is enough to get them running.”

However, some European scientists hypothesize that birds and bats might be able to detect impending earthquakes by sensing fluctuations in the Earth’s magnetic field. Backed by the German Aerospace Agency and the Russian Space Agency, the International Cooperation for Animal Research Using Space .

According to University of Utah seismograph stations, Sunday’s earthquake occurred about four miles north-northeast of the Norris Geyser Basin and was felt in the Montana border towns of West Yellowstone and Gardiner, both about 20 miles from the epicenter. No damage has been reported, although some preppers wonder if it’s only a matter of time before the park’s supervolcano annihilates everything within a 500-mile radius, covering most of the country in ash and sending the planet into a prolonged nuclear winter.

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Validating every stereotype you’ve learned from Portlandia, Guinness World Records confirmed Tuesday that the Oregon city officially holds the world record for the .

For one full minute, 936 people, including a newly married bride and groom, wrapped their arms around a tree at Hoyt Arboretum in Washington Park in July 2013. The previous record of only 720 tree huggers was set in the United Kingdom in 2011.

Portland’s prestigious status as the preeminent tree-hugging destination might not stand for long. Scotland already attempted to best the record, hosting a tree-hugging fest last December that has yet to be confirmed.

Leaving nothing to chance, Portland has already scheduled a larger world-record

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Mothers might not feel like they have any extra seconds in the day to exercise, but a new study finds that being a more active mom will make your young children more active too.

A study from the University of Cambridge published in the tracked 554 mothers and their four-year-olds using accelerometers. The data showed that when mothers boosted their physical activity, children’s moderate to vigorous activity increased 10 percent.

“We saw a direct, positive association between physical activity in children and their mothers—the more activity a mother did, the more activity her child did,” .

However, it is still not clear whether active moms inspired their children to be more active or if already active children were making their mothers run around after them, Hesketh cautioned.

Efforts to promote physical activity should include both mothers and children, . Instead of driving to the park, parents and children should walk, Slujis recommends, and substituting a board game with a game of tag can pay big dividends in children’s fitness over a month or a year.

Want to get your family more active and raise children who rip? Check out ¹ú²ú³Ô¹ÏºÚÁÏ‘s 2014 Active Family Guide.

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The Copenhagen zoo that made international headlines in February for publicly killing and dissecting a healthy giraffe is under another barrage of criticism for killing four of its lions.

, two lions the zoo described as a “very old” breeding pair and their two cubs were put down on Monday. Zoo spokesman Tobias Stenbaek Bro told reporters that the culling was necessary to make way for a new male lion to form a breeding group with the zoo’s pair of 18-month-old females, and no other zoos were interested in adopting the lions.

“Because of the pride of lions’ natural structure and behavior, the zoo has had to euthanize the two old lions and two young lions who were not old enough to fend for themselves,” zoo officials said.

that the zoo was playing God and should be boycotted until it starts respecting animals.

To protect populations against inbreeding and to maintain genetically diverse populations, between 3,000 and 5,000 European zoo animals are annually “management euthanized,” . A few hundred of this estimate include larger animals such as lions and giraffes. This zoo euthanizes about 30 animals every year.

Last month, Bengt Holst, the zoo’s scientific director, received death threats after Maurice, an 18-month-old giraffe, was killed, chopped up, and fed to lions (possibly these lions) in front of an audience that included children.

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 that Russian President Vladimir Putin will relaunch a Soviet-era national fitness program with surplus funds originally earmarked for the $50 billion Sochi Olympics and Paralympics.

Known by the acronym GTO, which translates to “Ready for Labor and Defense of the USSR,” the Soviet physical education system was introduced by Joseph Stalin in 1931. The program required all school-age and college students to regularly pass physical training tests in competitive sports such as running, skiing, and swimming. Most former Soviet republics eliminated GTO when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Reinstating the fitness program would “pay homage to our national historical traditions,” Putin told reporters. “The Olympics and Paralympics have demonstrated that we are again becoming one of the leaders in global sports.”

It’s still unclear what a modern GTO regimen would look like, but don’t be surprised if Russian children begin learning judo. Putin is a black belt in the sport and a former St. Petersburg champion. Check out his moves:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=0lxMglj8LuM

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Just because you aren’t in a zoo doesn’t mean you can feed the animals.

Four men from two Florida dive companies are facing charges linked with illegally feeding sharks and fish. Working jointly with the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office, investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) recorded video of two divers feeding sharks by hand in state waters in early February. Both vessels’ operators are also implicated in these charges.

“This is a public safety issue,” . “The FWC’s Division of Law Enforcement wants to ensure these beautiful coastal waters remain safe for divers.”

, diver Luis Jordan defended feeding sharks by hand, saying people don’t need to fear sharks.

Feeding fish in Florida waters has been illegal since 2002. These second-degree misdemeanors could land the accused in jail for up to 60 days with a fine of up to $500.

See other footage from the dive:

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For most, bungee jumping is a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but for Colin Phillips the extreme sport was a 151-times-in-a-day attempt at a Guinness World Record.

On Friday, the fitness coach and former professional rugby player from the UK surpassed the previous official record of 105 jumps in a 24-hour period. From a 328-foot crane in Dubai, Phillips completed the feat in three sessions, jumping for fewer than 12 cumulative hours. Philips had originally aimed to complete 200 jumps but stopped at 151 from fatigue.

“I feel a bit beaten up, to be honest,” . “Every jump has been different. Sometimes it’s a good one. Sometimes it’s not so good.”

Besides the most jumps in 24 hours, Guinness World Records also recognizes the  (15,200 feet), the while bungee jumping (198 feet 8 inches), and the Ìý(80).

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Christmas Day, 2006, a healthy six-year-old boy swimming in an indoor pool in Nebraska starts coughing and struggling to breathe. His parents take him out of the water and the coughing fit continues. Then he begins vomiting. Five hours go by and his condition deteriorates. 

Barking with every cough and choking with each breath, the boy is rushed to the emergency room where his condition is finally stabilized, after a dexamethasone injection, a corticosteroid, and three doses of racemic epinephrine (a.k.a. adrenaline). The attending physician .

Over the last decades, a growing body of scientific research suggests that peeing in the pool is not as harmless as we once thought. A builds on prior research to show that the binding of chlorine and uric acid, a chemical introduced into pools almost entirely from urine, can create two potentially harmful chemicals, cyanogen chloride and nitrogen trichloramine, says study co-author Ernest Blatchley, a professor at Purdue University. These chemicals can then enter the air inside the swimming pool through evaporation.

Used as a chemical weapons sporadically during WWI, interferes with the body’s ability to use oxygen and can harm the central nervous system, lungs, and heart. Trichloramine is associated with , and abundant levels of the chemical have been linked with swimming pool public health outbreaks, such as the one that at an indoor waterpark in 2007.

The relationships between disinfection by-products and health problems commonly associated with swimmers, lifeguards, and pool staff, remains unclear. But breathing in air at an indoor pool puts employees at “an excess risk for respiratory symptoms indicative of asthma” according to one European study. Another study from of competitive swimmers who frequented an indoor pool, (but not in outdoor pool swimmers). In the bloodstream, chloroform can damage your liver and kidneys over a long period of exposure.

So should you stop going to the pool? No, says Michele Hlavsa, the Chief of the Center for Disease Control’s Healthy Swimming Program. The health benefits still outweigh the possible dangers. But be wary of indoor pools that don’t look well maintained. “A good, healthy pool doesn’t smell at all.” Hlavsa says.

Without proper maintenance or effective ventilation systems, these hazardous gases will build-up. So look for indoor pools with open access—through windows and doors—to the oudoors and that use fans to boost airflow over the pool’s surface. And don’t underestimate the importance of showering before you enter the pool and actually ignoring the impulse to pee. As Blatchley and his co-authors write, it is after all “a voluntary action for most swimmers.”

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Although ravens are protected by federal law, the to “conduct lethal control actions” on 4,000 ravens in the southern part of the state during the next two years.

Because ravens have an appetite for sage-grouse eggs and chicks, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game plans to cull the state’s ravens in three areas during the sage-grouse nesting season (mid-March through mid-June). The ground-dwelling sage-grouse is currently a candidate for Endangered Species Act protection.

If these birds become protected, oil and gas developers, utility companies, and even wind farms could face development restrictions. Even ranchers with permits to graze livestock on public land could be affected.

But some are critical of Idaho’s appraoch. As , Idaho wildlife officials cite human-caused habitat destruction and fragmentation as the greatest threats to the sage-grouse, with predation ranking 12 among 19 factors that contribute to the birds’ decline.

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