When the weather started becoming consistently warm, the ex-track athlete in me was excited to get outside and start doing daily runs. But after a couple of weeks of running, I noticed my chest was hurting a lot so I decided to stop. I have always known that China has an issue with air pollution and smog, but being in a smaller city like Ningbo, I didn't think I would be affected by it as much as I would if I were in a more populated area like Beijing. On the days I decided to go for a run, the skies always looked pretty clear to me, but I began looking up the Air Quality Index (AQI) each day just for safety.Through my extensive research via Google, I found that people shouldn't exercise outside when the Air Quality Index is greater than 150 because this is very unhealthy. No biggie! I'll just wait for the days when the AQI is below 150 to do my running. Well, weeks had passed and after checking the AQI every day, it unfortunately never went below 150. Right when I thought about giving up completely and finding an alternative way to exercise, we had 3 days of Air Quality that was in the 80s. Yay!
- FBG
p.s. I checked the Air Quality Index in Virginia Beach, VA just to put it into perspective, and it's 32. Such a huge difference.