Provided by CU)
BOULDER — Balch Fieldhouse at the University of Colorado is old, dark, gloomy and occasionally smelly, as thousands of Bolder Boulder runners can attest. They shuffle through it every Memorial Day, exhausted and drenched in sweat, to pick up lunch bags and refreshments after the race.
In a sense, Balch launched the American running boom of the 1970s. It was the reason a young Yale graduate named Frank Shorter moved to Boulder to train in 1970. Balch had the only indoor track above 5,000 feet in the U.S., and Shorter understood the benefits of altitude training.