My Journey With Health And Fitness – Air Quality

Since we are leaving for Mexico tonight yesterday I went to the salon to get my nails done and a pedicure. However, when I got up yesterday morning I realized that I had lost one of my big toenails. I wasn’t too concerned about that since I knew I had runner’s toe and that nail had been completely black for months. What concerned me was how I could get some nail polish and some fancy art work on that nail. Not to worry, the great tech who does my nails simply built a fake toenail. As a matter of fact you can’t even tell that it is fake. Yes, I’m a little vain when it comes to how my feet look in sandals.

On my last blog I posted about the wild fire smoke in the Metro Vancouver area. It actually got quite a bit worse and Sunday morning when I opened the patio door to let the dogs out the smell of smoke was almost overwhelming. When the sun came up there was that orange glow in the sky that unfortunately we seem to get every summer now. Some of the smoke is coming from the States in the south and some from the Fraser Valley in the east. As a matter of fact on Sunday Metro Vancouver’s air quality was rated the worst in the world. Trust me, it was not a great time for running outdoors.

Yesterday the news advised the air should start to clear up but Environment Canada still had us under an air quality warning. That put me in a bit of a dilemma, Monday’s are now when I walk my group of seniors. I absolutely have the authority to cancel our walk but I know how much the women look forward to it. I decided the best thing to do was for me to walk to our meeting place (it’s about 2 km from our house) and see how things felt. The air was quite a bit clearer than it had been on the weekend but I already had received a text from one of the walkers advising she would not be joining us (she has asthma so it was no big surprise to me that she opted out). I met with the walking group and took measure of how all of them felt about doing the walk and everyone seemed to feel the same in that the air didn’t seem too bad. It was agreed that if anyone felt any issues when walking we would stop. We made it through the 5k walk without any problems and we were all glad we did it.

The important thing is being conscious of the air quality and how it can impact you. I’m pretty healthy at this point in my life but I still think about whether an outdoor run is worth the risk or if there is some other safer activity I can do. Really, I don’t feel bad about changing a hard run into a long walk. I also have to think about those around me including my walking group. While these are all active, healthy seniors they are still at higher risk. I would have canceled that walk yesterday if I thought it could harm any of them. Air quality is becoming important here especially during the summer and we all need to be cognizant of the impacts it can have.

I am going to try to keep the blog going while I am in Mexico for the next 3 1/2 weeks but I’ll just apologize in advance in case I miss a post.