Pollution & Running?

Question

What do other urban runners do to mitigate the effects of pollution on their health & training? is running in an urban area counterproductive? Thanks for any insights.

Answer 1

It depends on the level of pollution as well as the time you run. If you can avoid the traffic hours and such and you can see clear sky, I believe there should be little concern - unless you are talking about chemical pollution, which will be another discussion.

Answer 2

Many urban runners actually look at the weather channels to see the pollution levels that day, and if it's a very large city, there may even be varying levels of pollution in different places.

They will run at the higher spots in the city (In Boston, they meet up on the hills at the edge of the city to escape the pollution)

Run near a lake/river/ocean nearby (Boston, New York, LA, Seattle and other seaside cities have runner-friendly places near the ocean) because the ocean takes out the pollution faster

Runners will run when it's raining or damp because that bogs down the pollution so it's not floating everywhere.

If it's an extremely polluted area, any runner will feel it. Less oxygen intake, more exhaustion and shorter runs will be the result. It can be counter productive if there is no where that is clean. That's why the marathon runners in China are questioning whether or not they want to run. It's so polluted there that it's like running with thick smoke from a fire.....bad bad bad.