Are You Living It?

I was just thinking that it may be time to give up smoking. Here in Northern California the smoke from Wildfires has given me a chance to take up smoking while training. I wasn’t sure if the two would go together, but it seems to be helping. My workouts feel much harder, even the ride downhill to town can sometimes take my breath away. I must be really putting out the watts!

Seriously, training in poor air quality can be pretty detrimental to your long term training goals. The tissues of your upper airway and lungs can be irritated and even inflamed from heavy particulate or chemical pollutants in the smoke filled air. We normally think of smog, but smoke can be even worse. The smoke from wildfires is high in particulate and contains chemical pollutants, which can cause damage in shorter time. Think twice about your workouts when conditions warrant. Changing out a day of hill repeats on a smokey day may be replaced temporarily with some weight room workouts indoors. If you must go out and ride, consider some skill or recovery time, mixed with weights or other indoor time to balance out your schedule and keep on track. A week of intense workouts in the smoke could set you back more than a few weeks, if you cause enough irritation to lead to bronchitis or asthma type symptoms. These conditions can limit your long term gains by decreasing your ability to give it your all when you need to in those hard speed and strength workouts over threshold. Mainly, during detrimental workout conditions, no not like rain or workouts that just hurt, but the ones that can actually injure you more than make you stronger and faster, think how to get a similar effect with much lower risk. Train for the long haul during bad air days.

With that, maybe one more puff, cough, and I’ll quit for good.