Wildfire Smoke And Training: When Should You Change The Plan?
You wake up on Saturday morning with a long ride planned. The bike is ready, bottles are filled, and you’ve carved out a few hours to train. Then you look outside…
The mountains are barely visible, the sky has that familiar haze, and you can smell smoke.
For runners, cyclists, hikers, and anyone who spends a lot of time training outdoors, wildfire smoke has unfortunately become another variable we need to consider during the summer months. The question we hear is usually pretty simple:
Can I still train today?
The answer isn’t always yes or no. But it does require understanding what you’re exposing yourself to, how exercise changes that exposure, and when modifying the plan is the better training decision.
Why Training Changes The Equation
Wildfire smoke is a mixture of gases and particles, but one of the primary health concerns is fine particulate matter known as PM2.5.
These particles are extremely small and can travel deep into the respiratory system. Wildfire smoke can irritate the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and exposure can cause symptoms including coughing, wheezing, headaches and shortness of breath. For someone planning a workout, there’s another important piece to consider:
The harder you exercise, the more air you breathe.
Think about the difference between sitting on your patio and riding your bike up a sustained climb. Your breathing rate and depth increase considerably as intensity rises.
That means a hard ride, tempo run or steep hike isn’t simply exercise performed in smoky conditions. You’re potentially increasing the amount of smoke you’re inhaling at the same time.
This is why BCCDC specifically recommends taking it easier and limiting outdoor exercise on smoky days. The harder you breathe, the more smoke you inhale.
Start With The Air Quality, Not The Training Plan
One of the mistakes we can make as athletes is treating the workout on the calendar as something that has to happen. Tuesday says intervals, so Tuesday must be intervals.
Environmental conditions are part of training too.
Before heading outside during wildfire season, check your local Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) and any air-quality alerts. The AQHI runs from 1 to 10+, with higher numbers representing greater health risk.
Conditions can also change substantially throughout the day. A smoky morning doesn’t necessarily mean the entire day will look the same, and the opposite can also be true.
Health Canada currently recommends considering modifications as air quality worsens. At an AQHI of 7–10, reducing the duration or intensity of strenuous outdoor activity becomes increasingly appropriate. At 10+, cancelling or rescheduling strenuous outdoor activity should be seriously considered.
Those decisions also need to be more conservative for people who are more susceptible to smoke, including those with cardiovascular or respiratory conditions.
Numbers aren’t the only consideration, Pay attention to how you actually feel.
A scratchy throat, coughing, headache, unusual shortness of breath, wheezing, dizziness or chest discomfort are not things to push through for the sake of finishing a workout.
What Should You Do With Today’s Workout?
This is where coaching becomes less about following a program and more about making a good decision. Imagine you have a three-hour ride scheduled and the air quality isn’t great. You have several options:
You might move the ride to another day when conditions are expected to improve. You might shorten it and keep the intensity lower. You could ride indoors. Or you could replace the session entirely with strength, mobility or another appropriate indoor workout in cleaner air.
The same applies to a runner with intervals scheduled or someone planning a long hike. Changing the workout doesn’t automatically mean losing the day. Sometimes it simply means changing the stimulus. If the conditions are poor enough, taking the day off is also a perfectly reasonable training decision.
Don’t Try To Win One Workout
This is probably the most important part.
Athletes, particularly consistent ones, can become very attached to completing what is written in the program. We understand why. Consistency matters, building fitness takes time, and there is satisfaction in seeing a week of training completed exactly as planned.
Consistency shouldn’t be confused with rigidity.
One modified ride isn’t going to meaningfully change your fitness. Neither is moving a run by a day or replacing an outdoor workout with an indoor session. Training works through the accumulation of productive work over months and years. From that perspective, unnecessarily exposing yourself to poor conditions simply to check off today’s workout doesn’t accomplish much. There will always be another ride.
A Better Way To Think About Summer Training
Wildfire smoke isn’t the only environmental variable we deal with. Heat, humidity, poor sleep, travel and changing schedules can all affect what makes sense on a particular day.
Good programming needs enough structure to move you forward, but enough flexibility to respond when circumstances change. So when you wake up to smoky skies, don’t immediately ask:
“Can I get away with doing my workout?”
Ask a better question:
“What’s the best training decision I can make today?”
Sometimes the answer will be heading out as planned. Sometimes it will mean reducing the intensity, shortening the session, moving indoors or shifting the workout to another day.
Occasionally, the right answer is simply taking a day off.
None of those decisions derail your progress.Learning how to adjust while keeping the bigger picture in mind is part of training well for the long term.
At Groundwork Athletics, that’s ultimately what we’re interested in, not winning a single workout, but building strong, capable and durable athletes who can keep doing the things they enjoy for a very long time.
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