Air quality

During my time in Melbourne, perhaps during the late 3/4 of it, I fell in love with road cycling. I was already relatively fit cause I enjoyed working out at the gym lifting weights and so on, but road cycling was a new challenge in this sense cause it requires a different kind of fitness. In any case, I achieved a relatively good level and I would go out for rides as often as possible, sometimes long ones of over 100km, and road cycling during the lockdowns in Melbourne was one of the things that helped me pull through.

While the air quality in Melbourne, particularly in the city, wasn't absolutely clear, it was definitely good for outdoor physical activity; perhaps the only extraordinary exception was during the fires at the beginning of 2020. It's interesting because I never really noticed how bad the air quality in Mexico City was. I first noticed how much this mattered in one's well-being when I travelled in 2018 to Los Angeles; as we stepped down the plane we could see the sky covered in a greyish blanket of light smoke and it was as if a switch had been turned on in my body putting me in some kind of mild overdrive.

Now during my time in Mexico City, I don't have a road bike so I'm just using a stationary bike to try and retain some fitness. I feel like I can notice, anyhow, the difference and that it's harder to keep up with the local air conditions; added to that, it is well-known that Mexico City is more than 2km above sea level and where I'm staying there's some extra meters added to that. At least the latter might be beneficial for when I get to ride again at sea level and/or do some climbing on the bike. On the bright side, in my opinion the weather in Mexico City tends to be much better than that in Melbourne.