I worked hard last night, finishing a tough 5 by 400 meter
speed workout in our lovely FL summer heat.
I was doing well, despite the less-than-ideal weather, cranking out the
first 4 laps relatively easily. Sure, I
was winded by the end of each repeat, but I walked slowly for a few minutes
after, caught by breath, and was ready for the next 400. Until that last one. Halfway through my final 400, my elephant
returned and I was instantly transported to the spring of my sixth grade year, when
we were made to run the 600-yard run for the Presidential Physical Fitness
Tests…
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| image credit: https://wendythewanderer.files.wordpress.com |
I’ll never, in all of my days, forget walking the last
couple hundred yards that day, gasping, wheezing, searching desperately for oxygen
to fill my lungs and finding nothing. I
remember clearly my vision reduced to a tunnel, the sound in my ears muffled,
my chest compressed as if an elephant sat upon it, as my PE teacher shook her
head in dismay, saying, as she recorded my piss-poor performance, “You need to
try harder.”
I did try. I tried
hard!
I was known by then as a sprinter. I couldn’t hit a baseball much past third
base, but I could outrun the throw of it to first base every time. I was always selected as either the lead or
the anchor for sprint relays on Field Day.
I was training hard for the ballet at the time, taking classes every
weekday, hours-long intensive workshops on Saturdays. Really, I was among the fittest of my
classmates. And yet… I finished dead
last, far behind the pudgy kid who sat out nearly every PE class, in that
stupid 600-yard run. And spent the rest
of the day trying to catch my breath.
The trend continued.
In high school, I played varsity soccer: I did fine on the field, where
I could catch my breath between runs, but the elephant appeared every time we
were tasked with running a straight mile or so to warm-up. When I met and married a triathlete, I tried
swimming laps with him and my elephant showed up with alarming haste. We tried running on the beach… elephants
everywhere. We took up swing dancing, a
fast-paced, highly aerobic activity – and I quickly found that I had to sit
every third song out to avoid the elephant.
One day, when I was finally employed in a position that
offered health insurance, I mentioned the elephant to my doctor. She asked detailed questions about how the
elephant felt – heavy, compressive, like no matter how hard my lungs expand or
contract, I can’t fill them up with air – when it appeared – any time I moved really
fast over a sustained period of time – and if I’d had any serious lung
infections – a bout of flu, that became pneumonia, that resulted in a year of
chronic bronchitis in high school, a repeat of the same several years later,
more bouts of acute bronchitis than I could count. And then my doctor gave me the explanation
that had eluded me since sixth grade: what I had was a condition called Exercise-Induced
Asthma. And, while there was no cure
for it, there were things I could do to mitigate its accompanying elephants.
Exercise-induced asthma isn’t really asthma at all, but its
symptoms mimic those of an asthma attack: tightness of the lungs, wheezing,
inability to draw a full breath. Some folks
with regular asthma will also suffer exercise-induced asthma, but others may
not. Some folks, like me, who have no
other occurrences of asthma, suffer the exercise-induced variety. We who battle the elephants don’t just get
winded with aerobic activity. We reach a
point where our bronchial passages become so constricted, we truly aren’t
receiving adequate oxygen. Without
adequate oxygen, our bodies begin to shut down functions. It’s dangerous, scary stuff.
So what can we do to keep the elephant at bay? We can avoid aerobic activity, of course, but
what fun is that?! We can, however, avoid doing it in
conditions that worsen symptoms: cold and/or dry air, times of high pollen
counts, any time our lungs are already compromised by allergies/cold/flu. For the rest of the time, we can use an
inhaler of albuterol, which is typically considered a rescue inhaler for
asthmatics. For the sufferer of
exercise-induced asthma, however, the inhaler is a proactive lifeline: taking
two puffs 15-20 minutes before I exercise reduces the symptoms of
exercise-induced asthma significantly.
Note that I did not say using an inhaler eliminates the symptoms. It doesn’t sadly. It does work well enough, especially when
combined with using run-walk intervals, to banish all chest-sitting elephants
from my runs at paces ranging from easy to tempo, but speed workouts? They’re another story. But the good news is that combining the
inhaler with increasingly difficult speed work does, eventually, result in aerobic adaptations, and I have been
able to increase my speed and pace over time through small upticks in exertion.
The truth is that I may never be able to run distance
without taking walk breaks, no matter how strong my legs may be; I’ll likely always
need those walk breaks to avoid a run-ending asthma attack. I have no fantasies about winning my age
group or setting any records, so that’s fine; taking the walk breaks means
finishing what I start, and that’s what matters most to me.
As for yesterday’s speed workout, I may have ended that final
repeat a few meters shy of 400, but the important thing was that I pushed a
little further than I have before (my previous attempt being 4 by 400 meters). I made my body work a little harder, forcing
adaptations, without pushing it to a point of danger. And I finished my workout strong, running an
easy ¾ of a mile with no elephants to be seen.
Do you struggle with chest-sitting elephants when you run? If you do, and haven’t seen a doctor about
it, please do! This is a condition that
can be easily treated and does not need to mean the end fo anyone’s running
fun.
