My Journey With Health And Fitness – Listening To Warnings

I’ve been pushing things this week. When I am out walking I really have been walking hard trying to keep my pace up. I get frustrated when my pace is lower than what I think it should be so then I push harder. So far this week I have walked 85.54 km and the last 10 km walk today had the best pace so far. I”m going to keep pushing to make the most of all the walking I am doing.

Today was supposed to be a run day. I had planned to do a 5km run to the gym at 4:15am. The termperature was perfect for doing a run, not too cool and the heat hadn’t really started yet (note it has now). I was kind of excited to get my run done just to keep my momentum. But as they say, the best laid plans.

For those of you who don’t know, it is once again wildfire season. All across our interior, northern BC and even here in the Metro Vancouver area we have forest fires. To top all of those off we have fires south of us in Washington State. The problem with all these fires is the amount of smoke that is in the area. For us in my area, depending on the winds we will get smoke from our Province but also from the USA. It’s no one’s fault, it just depends on how bad the fires are and what way the winds are blowing.

When the Alexa alarm went off this morning it gave me the weather and it sounded perfect for my run. Then it announces, yellow alert for the poor air quality. One of the things with these warnings is that they say not to do heavy exercise outdoors due to the potential damage you can do to your lungs breathing in all the pollutants. I thought about it while I got ready and had breakfast and realized that doing a run potentially could do far more harm than not doing one. Instead, I opted to walk to the gym at a reasonable pace.

During my fitness class the instructor mentioned that she had initially planned on us doing some running intervals. I told her about my decision to forego running today and she felt it was an excellent call. While the smoke was not as bad today as it was yesterday, it is still hanging there.

And so, listen to the warnings, they are there for a reason. I know I have options like toning down an outdoor workout or using the treadmill (ew!). Either of those is better than risking damage from breathing in too much bad air.