The evil yellow dust from China!!

Well, it's that time of the year. The time during spring season in which China's sand storms picks up toxic pollutants and showers them into areas in South Korea and parts of Japan. Jeju is one of the victims. We were hit pretty bad (the worst it has been in a few years) this past week by the yellow dust.

Let me describe to you what the experience is like. The sky looks yellowish gray, very polluted and foggy. There is also yellow dust on the streets and it gets blown into the stairway of our building. You see many Koreans wearing protective masks around their mouths/noses to help them to not breath in the air. It's actually a scary thing to see if you have not seen this before! Actually, I've seen it before but it was still a lil eery for me. I felt like I was in a horror movie or something when I was walking from the bus stop to my school and I couldn't see clearly in the air and then there were these people walking towards me with masks over their mouths! ha I will try to take a picture sometime, without feeling rude!

The yellow dust is really a horrible effect that South Korea gets from China. The worst part is though, they say you should not be outdoors much during this weather. And so, for the last few days, I have had to do my long marathon training indoors! It can be very mind-boggling to run around a small track 12 times just to reach 1 mile, then to do that 228 more times to reach 20 miles! haha It seems much longer than when you run outside.

Even though I took the safe route by running inside, I still think the yellow dust got me sick again. This week Keith and I have had a cold that just won't go away. I also have a sore throat (felt like a golf ball was in there!) and had a small fever. Keith made sure to go pick up ice-cream to help cure my sore throat though so I'm feeling about 90% better! :)

I had to take a few days off from training; however, I am still running strong and doing amazing with my schedule! I ran 16 miles on Monday inside, and will be running 20 miles this upcoming Sunday, hopefully outside. It is supposed to be really warm on Sunday- 24 degrees Celsius, which is about 77 degrees Fahrenheit and no rain. So although it's been rainy the last few days, I'm gonna keep my fingers crossed and hope for good weather so I can enjoy this ocean-view run outdoors.

I only have about 1 more month of training! I'm so excited for race day on June 12th and will be working my hardest this month...weightlifting, doing yoga (which is great for stretches before and after my long runs), bootcamps, running hills and of course doing my short, medium and long run days. My goal is to get stronger, faster and run up to 26 miles (a full marathon) 2 weeks before the race date. Then, the week before the race, I will take off my long run to rest my legs. This will give me SUPER speed for race day, I hope. :)