Of the three sports in triathlon, running is by far the hardest for me. I struggle with comfortably breathing during my run. I have a history of moderate asthma. The asthma is seasonal and triggered by pollen, dust or some other particulate. I’m not sure exactly which ones. But, whatever it is it blooms during late February and March. This year was no exception and the running and breathing was very difficult this year too. Although I’m accustomed to the problem, I’ve had a second bout of breathing issues in late May and June. There may be another component which is called exercise induced asthma. This is triggered by vigorous training. The timing was most concerning, because now it may derail my Ironman training.

There’s actually a couple things going on here. (1) There’s congestion, including boogers, mucus, and general clogging up of the breathing pipeways. (2) Then there’s also bronchial inflammation, which presents as a wheeze and squeezing of the lungs on both a macro- and micro- scopic levels.

Dealing with the first is a pain (figuratively), but fairly straightforward. I have tried all the over-the-counter symptomatic ones like Claritin, Zyrtec, etc. They all suck. They dry my out and make me sleepy and irritable. Rather, I choose to blow my nose and stay clear minded.

For the second, this bronchial part is the tougher to deal with, it takes more time and energy to calm down and then restart a run. It’s counterproductive and really wastes valueable training time. This week, I went to the doc to request steroid inhaler. This dilates the bronchii. Opens up the lungs from the minuscule to the large passageways.  He also prescribed a steroid jump start set to really attack the wheezing.

So, the good news is that I tried all this and went for a run; It’s working better now. I don’t like to rely on drugs, so hopefully I can get over this hump and the random flower will die and all will be right in the universe.