Exercising Abroad

       As some of you lovely readers may know, I have recently fallen into the job of teaching English in China.  There are many, many challenges connected to teaching in China, but I am going to focus more on my personal health journey here, and the various factors that affect that.  While I mainly want to focus on physical health, mental health is a big part of that, so I wouldn't be surprised if a couple of my future posts turned out to be rambling and off topic. 

While in the United States, I educate people about healthy lifestyles through Personal Training.  Physical activity is great for stress reduction, self esteem, and internal health.  While I'm training other people, I also try to provide easy tips for an overall healthy lifestyle.  I enjoy training those who, like myself, had it rough in PE growing up.  Because of the bullying when you are little, exercise later in life becomes constant head game.  It's a battle that you fight with yourself whether you want to or not.  Each and every exercise session has to be planned, scheduled and forced.  When I know that I want/need to exercise, I usually have to mentally prepare myself for it at least a full day before, maybe even more-so depending on what I am about to do.  I have found that I don't always have to prepare myself; I thoroughly enjoy weights and look forward to a bodybuilding workout.  BUT being in China (and slightly refusing to cough up the cash for a gym membership), I find that I am struggling, again, with my workouts.  It's incredibly annoying, especially because I was making such good progress before coming here.  However, I am trying to take this in stride as a character building experience and to prove that you don't need fancy equipment to stay in shape (although I would absolutely love a pair of 10 lb dumbbells).

Running:

I have been running semi-consistently for about a year now.  I ran my first 5k last June, my first 10k in January, and I plan on running my first 1/2 marathon 5k combo in February 2015 (the races are two separate days, but back to back).  There are a lot of people I know who wouldn't necessarily be impressed by that because it is quite spread out over time (they run athons and have always been serious athletes), but I am super proud of myself.  I don't run very fast (seriously, I'm really not lying about this), but my personal goals do not include speed rather I focus on constancy.  Whenever I choose to run I want to run the full distance, I don't want to have to pause for a couple of minutes while I catch my breath - it takes that much longer to finish!

  Right now, three miles is my sweet spot.  I can run three miles and it's not challenging, but it feels far enough.  I'm not good at running, but I enjoy it.  It took about 6 months for me to be able to say that.  I'm pretty sure it's because I finally reached the point where I can lose myself and "meditate" while running.  But any longer than that and I start to say, "okay, I'm done now."

Now, however, I am facing the challenge of running outside.  In China.  I'm sure that thought may gross you out to some degree.  It should.  BUT not everywhere in China is super air polluted.  In fact, the air quality here in Rugao compared with other cities is down right clean.  Of course if you bust out the AQI and compare here to home (Portland, USA, Keep it weird y'all!) it's like a full 70+ numbers higher on any given day.  So I'm running in not the cleanest of air.  But at least I'm working out, right?  Well according to the internet, the weather last week was over 100 for 2 days, and in the high 90s the rest of the week.  It was 90 degrees at 9:00am on one of those days.  Just, eww.  It's unnatural.  So instead of running in the morning like I had been, I changed to running at night.  Well, that worked for a little bit.  It was much cooler, not too polluted and I felt way better.  But now, I don't know what magic conspired against me, but the pollution is now worse at night.  The town goes to sleep between 9 and 10pm, and when I went running at 10:00pm yesterday, I about died.  It felt like I was running with a straw in my mouth - I couldn't do it.  So now, I'm incredibly annoyed.  I run three or four days a week, not too much, but now I can't even do that because I can't breath.  *Glares at air.* 

And I can't help but think of what the polluted air is doing to my insides, which by running I am trying to keep in prime condition.  According to the literature that I've found on the subject of running and pollution, there is no long term study.  :(  As much as I want to be cheap, and I want to prove to myself how far I've come along, I need to realize that it's not a failure if I buy a membership to a gym while living here in China.  It's continuing on my goal and my journey of health and wellness. 

So tonight I am going to go with my friend and he is going to show me where the gym that is close to my work is located.  I haven't decided whether or not I am going to sign up for the gym for sure because honestly, I'm unsure as to whether or not I will remain in Rugao for much longer.  The people of China are great, but this training center is terribly managed and operated.  It's been a battle these last two months, and just when you think you're safe, they find another way to rile you up - but that's a tale for a different time. ;)

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