Who else has missed workouts due to the smoke from wildfires?
I’m in Tallahassee Florida and we’ve had lingering smoke on and off for a few weeks. Today is the first time I’ve canceled a workout (5 hour ride) due to smoke in the air. Visibility is down to about 100 yards, eyes are burning, the sky has that apocalyptic look to it, just plain nasty.
Anyone care to speculate on when the benefits of the exercise are negated by the effect from the smoke?
I just got back from Destin and while it was pretty clear most of the week, yesterday it was horroble. I was planning to do a short run before we hit the road but skipped it due to all of the smoke. It was really bad.
I found this link that shows where the smoke is going, pretty nasty looking.
http://www.firedetect.noaa.gov/viewer.htm
This one shows active fires, when you zoom out it looks like the whole state is on fire.
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=http://flame.fl-dof.com/wildfire/kml/FLActiveWildfiresOver100Ac.kml&ie=UTF8&z=10&ll=28.832644,-81.629791&spn=0.603928,0.925598&om=0>
I’m just north of Destin, and we didn’t get quite the smoke amount they did at the coast or further east. First four or so miles of my run yesterday weren’t bad, and then I went home because I started noticing it was harder to breathe than it should have been.
When we had really bad fires here in San Diego, I would do my running at the Gym on a treadmill. I think it is safer indoors with air conditioning on.
some genius farmer decided to control burn a bunch of slashpiles on a local hill the evening before this years time trail. on the preview ride you got about halfway up the hill and were in a smoke cloud. it was brutal, if there weren’t a bunch of pro teams around i probably would have turned around and just done repeats on the bottom half of the hill, but of course, i had to show off. by the next day they were smoldering, but you could still feel a serious burn when you got to the inversion layer. I’d just stay indoors until the aqi (air quality index, do you guys have those over there?) gets to a healthy level. living in central cal i know what bad air feels like, and wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Yes we have an air index here. I really don’t pay too much attention to it unless there are fires.
Last summer wildfires consumed 175,000 acres just north of here. The smoke was so bad it set off smoke alarms in my house when one window was left open about 2". Unless the wind shifted favorably, all my runs were on the treadmill and my rides on the Computrainer from mid-July to mid-September. Even 30 minute rides were out of the question on the bad days. Swimming was OK for the most part.
My personal rule of thumb: If visibility is severely limited (less than 1 mile) I would recommend working out indoors especially for running.
I hope they put the fires out soon.
Dean Wilson
www.anaerobiczone.com
Sorry for you folks southwest of here; I’m only about 35-40 minutes east or so of the big fires in the Swamp, and we have only had 3 days out of the last month and a half that the fires have been going that it was ugly over here. It helps being here on the coast. At least half of the day the wind is going to be blowing out of the east.