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.