There's no fire without smoke!

Finally the Santa Ana winds have stopped. This gives firefighters a much deserved break and will allow some cooler air to move inland from the ocean; today’s high was 94F tomorrows forecast is 78F. What remains now is the smoke in the air, the air quality is really quite bad, it is very deceptive because you cannot really see anything, although right now the moon has an orange tinge to it instead that granite white that we usually see, the photo to the left was taken yesterday afternoon and while today's sky was a lot clearer a lot of the particulate matter still remains. I did venture out this morning for an hour and once you start breathing deeply you can actually taste the badness.

You can see that the Air Quality Management District for Southern California rates the air quality for today and Friday as “Unhealthy” and according to their press release today "everyone should avoid all vigorous exertion, indoors or out".

I received the email as promised from the organizers of this weekends race advising us that this weekend event in Boney Mountain has been postponed, I am not really surprised and to be honest I am a little relieved, my recent stomach flu took a little more out of me than I thought and the thought of racing 13.1 miles with an elevation gain in excess of 2500’ was going to be a little challenging. So this weekend I'll confine myself to the treadmill and focus on regaining some of my base that was lost over the last two weeks.