Race Anxiety

The nerves are starting to set in now.. only 3 more days until the Cleveland half marathon! I don't think it's the distance that I'm worried about, I know I can run 13.1 miles. I mean, I've done a few times before and after my last 11 miler I still had energy left.

What I'm really worried about is my asthma. I started running in March of last year and that's when I noticed that I have exercised induced asthma. I went to a couple doctors and finally found a combination that was helping with my systems. The more I ran, the better my asthma go but as I look back I'm beginning to think that my asthma was only getting better because the weather was getting worse.

During the winter, I was very comfortable while running with almost 0 asthma attacks. I thought I had it under control.. then spring came and I can't breathe again. And no, exercise induced asthma does not mean that I'm out of shape.

I've been running indoors on a treadmill lately to avoid what we now believe is allergy induced asthma as well. I've been worrying nonstop about the race coming up and whether or not I'll be able to breathe. Last year's 10k in Cleveland was ugly (I had an asthma attack and threw up then passed out on the finish line and spent an hour and a half in the emergency medical tent on a nebulizer).

I made a doctor's appointment for this afternoon to see if there was anything that I could do to help my breathing. My doctor suggested corticosteroids but the inhaler form takes 2 weeks to work and the pill form takes 1 week so he gave me a cortisone shot that is supposed to take affect within 48 hours and last for a month.

I'm really hoping that this is the solution to my breathing problems. If the injection helps then I'll probably start on an inhaler that has corticosteroids, as opposed to the normal albuterol inhaler that I use now before I workout. I guess we'll find out! Keep your fingers crossed!

By the way, my last final is tomorrow morning!!! =))