Blake Bennions running

7 miles around the neighborhood and park, about 2.5 miles of it on grass. Felt okay, legs were a little tired from yesterday.

Been avoiding going outside due to the wildfire smoke this week, but decided at a certain point loss of fitness is equally bad. Tonight the AQI was down to 60-70s too so I thought it would be a good time to test it out with a 400m workout.

The air quality was pretty bad, I ended up turning around and heading home after 4 reps because I was coughing. The sky is a smoky haze covering the clouds from the wildfires up north. I guess Canada is the Midwests California.

On top of the bad air quality my legs also felt heavy tired and awkward today. No idea why except for bad sleep this week. It's Becca's first week back to work so I've been sleeping from about 1:30/2 to 7 this week. Trying to get to bed earlier but there's a lot to do in the day and I used to finishing whatever I don't get to during the day at night. Hopefully will eventually be getting to bed by 11/11:30 or even earlier. I've been tired this week but every day has been amazing , very grateful for my family.

Anyways yeah my legs didn't feel good, I hit 76 for the 4 400s and it didnt feel smooth. I'll chalk today up to lack of sleep and bad air quality. I think I'll do a treadmill run tomorrow to avoid the air quality. Grateful I invested in an upgraded air purifier earlier this year.

4.5 miles on the treadmill, still avoiding bad air quality. Started with half a mile at 12 degrees incline at 9 minute pace, ran most the rest of the run at mid-low 7 minute pace. I did another half mile of 12 degrees incline at the end with about a quarter mile of it at 7:30 pace and the rest at 9 minute pace. The 7:30 pace at 12 degrees incline was quite tough for me.

My core workout has been some yoga and then leg lifts, calf raises, figure eights, push ups, hip flexers, burpees, and pull ups. Now I'm adding lunges and squats. I do deadlift, dips, and squat jumps every now and then. For lifting throughout the week I do bent over rows, prone bench rows, deadlifts, 3 main shoulder lifts, shoulder press, curls, dumbbell bench.

Once we get a cable machine I'll add some more exercises. Sometimes I do tricep extensions but I'm leaning away from those because I feel like they add too much size to my arms and I need to lean down a bit. Once the cable machine is here I don't think I'll miss much standard gym equipment. In cedar city the retro fitness gym I would go to had a weighted jump machine and a continuous rope pull machine. Both really cool gym equipment machines I've never seen since.

No running, just lots of core. Still waiting for air quality to improve. I have a tendency to fixate on stuff like this. One of the perks of moving to Ohio for me was that the average AQI here is 24 and the average in Utah and Colorado is 30-33.

So unless you have a carbon filter air purifier the average pollution throughout the year is equivalent to smoking 3 cigarettes a week in Colorado/Utah vs 2 here in Ohio. One cigarette is equivalent to about 22 ug/m3 of p2.5 and am AQI is about 8 ug/m3 over 24 hours. AQI of 24 is about 5 ug/m3. That's still about 100 cigarettes in a year of damage to my lungs every year, which (along with risk of VOCs from our remodel) is why I bought the best heavy duty carbon filter air purifier so that I could reduce that to pretty much 0 at least when we're home. Don't want young Whitney to have any lung problems. My upgraded air purifier we got this spring is probably my most prized possession along with my adjustable dumbbells, those are amazing. With how much I've moved around the past few years I really don't have a lot of possessions I'm attatched to, but now I have this 50lb air purifier and 180lb for the two adjustable dumbbells that I will definitely take with me in any future move... I suppose lots of baby stuff too and thats before we get to Beccas stuff. Gone are the days everything I need in life easily fits in a sedan.

Anyways, I figure when you're doing an intense activity like running you're basically getting your full days worth of exposure to the bad air quality in about an hour (maybe that's extreme), which means that going on a run on a day like today where the AQI is over 100 would be the equivalent of smoking 2 cigarettes. Is a run as good for your lungs as 2 cigarettes are bad? Maybe I'll research that next, but I'm pretty sure that would be hard to compare. Its interesting to consider that even on an average air quality day, that line of thinking means that 30 miles of outdoor running would also come with negative pollution effects worth 2 cigerretes. I'm not sure why the EPA considers AQI of 50 perfectly safe... does that mean that smoking is perfectly fine as long as you limit yourself to under 200 cigerettes per year? At a certain point you just have to live your life and not worry about it, but it is a consideration for me.

I just hope the air quality improves quickly. Probably should have done a treadmill run today but my basement gets kind of stuffy if I don't open a window when I run...which would defeat the whole purpose of the treadmill.