Why is it that if I can do some­thing, I leave many projects unfin­ished and books unread?  If I can­not do some­thing, I want to keep try­ing.  Right now, I can’t get my mind of run­ning.  I am not a run­ner.  I do not run fast nor am I very good at it.  I have some sort of exer­cised induced asthma, and I can­not seem to get myself past two miles.  Yet, I keep find­ing myself want­ing to try again.

I ran (and walked) a 5K in May.  I started the Couch to 5k plan a few times.  I have never fin­ished it.  I started run­ning again this sum­mer.  I ran/walked around our block (about 1 mile per lap) twice.  I felt great after I fin­ished, but the next morn­ing I woke up with heels that were so sore I could barely walk.  I was sore and lim­ited in my exer­cise and even walk­ing for about the next 4 or 5 *weeks*!  After that, I took another hia­tus.  I can­not get run­ning out of my mind.  I never thought I would be a run­ner.  I have never thought of myself as a run­ner, but for some rea­son I want to become what I have never been.

As I do that, I am notic­ing that some­thing just doesn’t feel right.  I have com­plained writ­ten about my asthma a few times now.  Basi­cally, I have been on an inhaler for 7 months.  I still notices symp­toms dur­ing the day even sit­ting and relax­ing.  I have symp­toms dur­ing exer­cise.  I also cough uncon­trol­lably when I get sick.  Albuterol doesn’t help in either inhaler or neb­u­lizer form.  Is there a sec­ondary issue?  Do I have aller­gies?  Is this not really asthma?  Is the asthma stub­born or more severe than I/we ini­tially thought?

It is frus­trat­ing.  Right now, I am itch­ing to get out and get run­ning again, but I don’t do it, because it is such a frus­trat­ing expe­ri­ence.  We are mov­ing in July, and after we get set­tled, we plan to join the YMCA in town.  I am both look­ing for­ward to this (hav­ing access to the equip­ment and other activ­i­ties) and dread­ing the frus­tra­tion that comes with try­ing to increase my run­ning dis­tance and endurance.

I may start the couch to 5K plan again and give myself 2 weeks for each week of the plan.  I may also visit the doc­tor again to see if she has any insights.  I am not sure.

On Sat­ur­day, I ran a 5k race.  Orig­i­nally, I had planned (or hoped to plan) to run the half marathon with Jason.  As time passed, it became evi­dent that was not going to hap­pen.  Between me miss­ing run­ning days to meet other com­mit­ments, get­ting sick, find­ing out I had asthma, and feel­ing all around frus­trated, I just couldn’t do it.  I stopped run­ning alto­gether at the end of Octo­ber after a par­tic­u­larly nasty cold.  Then, I decided to pick it back up in Feb­ru­ary, and things were going alright until another nasty cold which left me unable to do any train­ing for about 2 weeks.  Even though I knew I wouldn’t make my goal, I decided to par­tic­i­pate anyway.

The morn­ing was cold and a lit­tle chaotic as no one around me really seemed to know what was going on.  As I got closer to the start­ing line, I felt more and more ner­vous.  I started off run­ning pretty well.  Then, I sort of just crashed.  I couldn’t breathe well.  I am not sure if it was from the cold air or the nerves or a com­bi­na­tion of both, but after about the first 3/4 of a mile, I felt pretty bad for the rest of the race.  I ran/walked, and I was able to run the last kilo­me­ter or so and fin­ish at a run­ning pace, but I really wasn’t all that happy with my inagural run­ning experience.

I placed 2800 out of 4500 par­tic­i­pants.  I was 329 out of 487 in my divi­sion.  I was 1775 out of 3117 for women.  My gun time was 48:01, and my actual time was 41:00.  My pace was 13:12 per mile.  I am not overly excited about this, but I guess every­one starts some­where, right?

I hope.

My plan is to get back on the tread­mill tonight. The last few weeks have been hard on my run­ning. Well, actu­ally, it’s been fur­ther back than a few weeks. I guess I’d have to say it’s been about a month and a half since I really had a stretch of good runs. First, I got sick, and I couldn’t run for about three weeks. Then, I real­ized that maybe my colds were some­thing more than just a cold. After talk­ing to my doc­tor, I did some pul­monary test­ing, and I have been diag­nosed with mild asthma. I’ve been tak­ing an inhaler this week, and I’m hop­ing that will ward off another cold and cough­ing episodes like the ones I had in through almost all of November.

I had pretty much com­pleted the Couch to 5K plan, but I think I’m going to jump back into that. From what I could tell before, it’s much eas­ier to run when you have a plan and it’s not just an arbi­trary dis­tance or time. I’m also hop­ing to be able to move past the plateau where I stalled last time. I’m hop­ing that this asthma med­i­cine will also help me while run­ning. I had noticed that when I was run­ning, I was never phys­i­cally tired enough to need to stop, but I was often so out of breath that I couldn’t keep going. I didn’t feel like I could get a good deep breath in. It was quite frustrating.

I’m still wait­ing on the results of my pul­monary func­tion test. My appoint­ment for that test was on Novem­ber 5. When I asked the tech about how long I should expect to wait for the results, she said that I could prob­a­bly expect them within a week. Well, it’s now been a week and two days, and I’m still wait­ing. In the mean­time, my cough is get­ting bet­ter. I was able to sleep in my bed last night for the first time since Octo­ber 23rd. It was nice to be back in my room. As much as I don’t like feel­ing sick and cough­ing, I really don’t like sleep­ing in a bed that’s not mine for over 3 weeks.

I was hop­ing that this would be fairly eas­ily resolved. I thought maybe I’d be lucky. I’d do the PFT test, and they would get a clear result. I’m actu­ally still pray­ing for that. I do think it’s more likely from what I’ve read and heard that the result will be incon­clu­sive mean­ing that more tests are needed. I find that to be pretty frus­trat­ing. For one, I want to know what’s going on with my body and fix it. The other rea­son is that I haven’t given up hope for being able to run the half marathon in Fargo in May. It’s a pretty slim chance, and the door is clos­ing on my chances the longer I have to wait. I still have that as my ulti­mate goal, though. If I end up not being able to do the half, I do know a few peo­ple who have decided to run the 5k, so that is my backup plan.

I told Jason today that life is kind of funny. When I was run­ning, I was hop­ing that some­thing would hurt or stop me from being able to run. Now that I’ve had to take a break, and it looks like this is going to be a harder goal to achieve than I orig­i­nally though, I really want to do it!

I’m plan­ning to call my doc­tor on Mon­day to see if she’s heard any­thing. I hate to be a bother, but I’m won­der­ing if maybe some paper­work got mis­placed some­where or some­thing. It just seems like 7 work days is a long time to wait for results of a fairly sim­ple test. For all of you who pray, I would appre­ci­ate any prayers in this area.

For a while after my last post about run­ning, I was get­ting that ques­tion pretty fre­quently. Lately, not as many peo­ple have been ask­ing. I was glad, because I have taken a run­ning hia­tus unfor­tu­nately. My last run was with Jason when we stayed at the in-laws’ house on Octo­ber 25th.

Since then, I’ve been sick. Ugh. It started out as a ter­ri­ble sore throat. I couldn’t swal­low. I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t want to eat. It hurt so bad. Then, my sore throat turned to a cough. For those of you who know me, you know that this isn’t a rare thing for me. I have a ten­dency to get sick pretty fre­quently, and nearly every cold or ill­ness I get turns into a cough. For years, at least the past 20 years, I’ve attrib­uted the fact that I get sick so often to a poor immune sys­tem. Lately, though, I’ve been won­der­ing if it’s some­thing else. Aller­gies? Asthma? Some­thing else all together? I don’t know.

I had an appoint­ment with my doc­tor last Mon­day. At that appoint­ment, I talked with her about this cough. She agreed that it wasn’t nor­mal, and it was some­thing we should try to fig­ure out. Last Wednes­day, I went to the hos­pi­tal and had a pul­monary func­tion test done. If you are like me, and you don’t know what a PFT is, I’ll tell you. Basi­cally, I sat in a lit­tle glass box. First, I had to breathe into a mouth­piece. Then, the tech­ni­cian pumped some sort of gas into the lit­tle box. I did some more breath­ing. Then, she opened the door, and I did a few more breath­ing exer­cises. Each time, she got a chart and some num­bers on her com­puter. I’m still wait­ing for the results of the test, but from what she said at the appoint­ment, I’m guess­ing the results will be incon­clu­sive. If that’s the case, I’m going to end up going back to the hos­pi­tal for another test that is specif­i­cally to diag­nose asthma.

So, to bring this back to the orig­i­nal topic of run­ning, I don’t know what’s going to hap­pen there. I was up to 2.5ish miles before I got sick. Most 10K and half marathon plans start around 3 miles. I would still really like to be able to run in the 2009 half marathon, but at this point, I’m not going to push it. I am hop­ing that fig­ur­ing out what is caus­ing this cough will also help my run­ning. I had got­ten to run­ning about 2.5 miles, but my sta­mina was pretty spotty. Some days, I could make it. Some days I felt like I was going to die after 15 min­utes. I wasn’t ever phys­i­cally tired enough that I felt like I needed to stop run­ning, but I some­times felt like I couldn’t get enough air. I’d really like to be able to say that I ran a half marathon, and I’d like to do it with Jason, but at this point I just want to fig­ure out what is caus­ing my cough.

Well, since I let the secret out last week, I fig­ured that I should con­tinue to update any­one who is inter­ested on how my run­ning is going.  Jason ran a 10K race on Sat­ur­day, and I took the boys to find him on the course and wave to him, and then we met him at the fin­ish line.  He did so well!  I was so proud of him.    (Because my hus­band rocks!)  In addi­tion to feel­ing proud, though, I also felt moti­vated.  If he is already run­ning 10K races in under an hour, I need to get myself in gear and get work­ing on my training.

Between my post last week and his great time in the race, I had the extra moti­va­tion I needed last night to com­plete my 3rd work­out of the week.  Gen­er­ally, I run Mon­day, Wednes­day, and Fri­day or Sat­ur­day depend­ing on our week­end sched­ule.  Monday’s run went pretty well.  I ran about 1.5 miles, and then I took a short walk­ing break before I fin­ished the last mile.  Wednes­day was TERRIBLE!  I’m not sure what hap­pened.  I felt tired almost as soon as I started run­ning, and I only made it to about 1.75 miles before I ended up walk­ing the rest.  Ugh, it was dis­ap­point­ing and frus­trat­ing.  Then, on Sat­ur­day, we went to my sister-in-law and brother-in-law’s house for my niece’s fourth birth­day.  We got home late, and I had a greasy piece of yummy pizza for sup­per fol­lowed up by some birth­day cake and ice cream.  I was pretty sure that Saturday’s run was going to mir­ror the one I’d had on Wednes­day, but I decided to give it a try (as spurred on by the 2 pre­vi­ously men­tioned moti­va­tors!).  I ran the first mile and a half at my usual pace of 4.2 miles per hour.  Then, since I was feel­ing good, I decided to run the next half mile at 4.5.  I went back down to 4.2 for .75 miles, and then I did the last .25 miles at 4.5.  I was really happy about that run.  I felt good while I was doing it.  I ran the entire dis­tance.  I increased my speed a lit­tle, and I made my goal!

After that run, I decided that I needed to get seri­ous about mak­ing a plan.  Jason had used the Hal Hig­don 10K run­ning plan for his race yes­ter­day.  He felt like it pre­pared him well, and he was quite sat­is­fied with it.  I decided to (again) fol­low his lead, and start­ing a week from tomor­row, I’m going to start that plan, too.  I’m a lit­tle ner­vous about it, but I’m hop­ing that things will progress grad­u­ally from here on out.

Since my other post, I’ve had a few peo­ple visit with me about running.

“Doesn’t it make your feet hurt?”  Sur­pris­ingly, no.  In the begin­ning, I had hoped it would so I would have an excuse to quit.

“I’ve tried run­ning, but I just don’t enjoy it.”  I started run­ning in June.  I def­i­nitely did not enjoy it in the begin­ning.  I’m not quite sure I would say that I enjoy it now either, but I can say that it does feel good.  It makes me feel strong and, I know it’s good for me.

I’m not say­ing that every­one should run or that I’m for sure going to be able to run the half marathon in May, but I do think that there’s some­thing to be said for mak­ing a goal and stick­ing with it even if it is *very* much out­side your com­fort zone.  That’s essen­tially my goal.  I think the 13.1 miles are secondary.

I’ve writ­ten a lit­tle about my hus­band, Jason, and how he’s very ded­i­cated to his run­ning. In fact, I am jeal­ous. I’m not really jeal­ous of the time he spends run­ning (although catch me on a crabby day and that might be true, too), but I’m more jeal­ous of the fact that he really sticks to things. He says he’s going to achieve a goal, and he does. There’s really no ques­tion about if. We just wait to see when it will hap­pen. In May of this year, he ran the 5K at the Fargo Marathon. He decided next year that he’d like to run the half marathon. Yikes! So, in a step along the way, he is reg­is­tered to run the 10K at our University’s home­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion this week­end. Yay, Jason!

This leads me to a lit­tle bit of an admis­sion. I have actu­ally been run­ning also for a while. We have a tread­mill, and I started doing the Couch to 5K plan in June. I didn’t tell any­one though. I didn’t want to have any pres­sure put on me if I didn’t like it or if I decided to stop. Then, I real­ized some­thing. I real­ized that if I really wanted to keep up with run­ning I needed a goal. I also needed to tell peo­ple so they could put pres­sure on me and keep me account­able! So, I’m going to do it. I’m mak­ing a goal (gulp) and telling peo­ple about it. My goal is to run the half marathon in Fargo in May of 2009 with Jason. (My heart is beat­ing faster as I’m typ­ing this…not a good sign for my phys­i­cal fit­ness.) I’m cur­rently run­ning 2.5 miles at a time with a goal of run­ning 3 times a week.

Since I have a Nike+iPod Sport Kit, I can track my progress pretty closely. AND, since you now know that this is my goal, I guess I’m going to be telling you about how my run­ning is going every week.