Pre-season training not blown away by sandstorm in Beijing
Work takes me to China every now and then, which is always fun and something to look forward, but the travelling takes its toll and busy schedules mean that cramming in a run before work often leaves me run down and I return to Blighty ill.
A late decision to compete in the London Marathon has put emphasis on higher than usual mileage (useful for the mountains this summer I hope) which meant that I needed to make sure that I maintained reasonable mileage whilst away. So when I woke up last Saturday morning and saw a yellow sky I winced slightly, but didn't think too much of it, as Beijing isn't renowned for having the freshest air in the world.
However, plodding around a university running track at 7am, there was a strange taste in the air, different from the acrid flavour of coal and nasty small particles that you're not supposed to breathe in. It wasn't until later that I was listening to BBC radio in my hotel room that I heard that Beijing had been encroached in a pre-season sand storm, dumping thousands of tons of yellow sand from the Gobi desert in the city. Fortunately that was the worst of it, and I ran a couple of other days under beautiful blue skies.
It's a good job I had got my speed session out of the way the day before.
A first for this trip to China was that I managed to put two running machines out of order. There's a lack of green spaces in central China, so I end up doing a fair bit of running, when staying in the city centre, on running machines. However, at a hotel on the outskirts of town, the made in China machine conked out as soon as I put the speed up above 10KM/hr, throwing me off backwards. I was relieved not to leave that 'gym' injured.
Work takes me to China every now and then, which is always fun and something to look forward, but the travelling takes its toll and busy schedules mean that cramming in a run before work often leaves me run down and I return to Blighty ill.
A late decision to compete in the London Marathon has put emphasis on higher than usual mileage (useful for the mountains this summer I hope) which meant that I needed to make sure that I maintained reasonable mileage whilst away. So when I woke up last Saturday morning and saw a yellow sky I winced slightly, but didn't think too much of it, as Beijing isn't renowned for having the freshest air in the world.
However, plodding around a university running track at 7am, there was a strange taste in the air, different from the acrid flavour of coal and nasty small particles that you're not supposed to breathe in. It wasn't until later that I was listening to BBC radio in my hotel room that I heard that Beijing had been encroached in a pre-season sand storm, dumping thousands of tons of yellow sand from the Gobi desert in the city. Fortunately that was the worst of it, and I ran a couple of other days under beautiful blue skies.
It's a good job I had got my speed session out of the way the day before.
A first for this trip to China was that I managed to put two running machines out of order. There's a lack of green spaces in central China, so I end up doing a fair bit of running, when staying in the city centre, on running machines. However, at a hotel on the outskirts of town, the made in China machine conked out as soon as I put the speed up above 10KM/hr, throwing me off backwards. I was relieved not to leave that 'gym' injured.
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