Jogging in the Smog (With Sally Jenkins)

At some point during our first week here, I came up with the brilliant idea that Sally Jenkins and I should go for a lengthy jog in the smog with the blog and the bog and report back our respiratory findings. So we did so Wednesday morning, she in jogging pants and an athletic shirt, me in shorts and my LeBron James "Crybaby 23" t-shirt, which was awesome. Sally has this peaceful park she's quite fond of, and I ran about 2.5 miles trying to find it, despite the fact that it's a half-mile from our hotel.

So by the time we finally met up on Beijing's version of the Beltway, we had both already covered some ground. But humor us, as we run together and breathe together and realize our mouths are collecting some weird grainy film together.

I was initially skeptical about all things smog, but let me tell you, it's for real. Granted, I feel like death whenever I jog, but this time I felt like death covered with tar enveloped in exhaust fumes wrapped in insulation sprinkled with gasoline and tied together with a sandpaper bow. In all honesty, running at a slow clip for a very short distance, we undeniably got a lot thirstier and felt a lot crummier than we would have even in D.C.'s humidity. Take a look. Thanks to Jonathan Newton for the camera work and Jonathan Forsythe for the edit, and don't make fun of us too much.