Normally when I go out for a run, i grab a shot of ventolin on the way out the door. It really slows me down on the run if I can't breathe - for all the obvious reasons. My breathing has been a lot better this year. I put it down to having the heaters on low in the house all winter, and also the running. I have been taking a powder mix of steroid and long acting ventolin this year, but rather erratically. Bit naughty really considering a single course of this drug costs over a hundred dollars, and the government is supplying it to me for three dollars. I guess the subsidy is a bonus of being a registered asthmatic. If there can be a bonus in being an asthmatic. Registered or otherwise.
Anyway, I have done the last two circumnavigations of the block without the ventolin. I felt absolutely fine. This is quite an achievement for me. Yay - I'm almost like a healthy person - if you don't take into account the steroids and long acting ventolin
Okay, I'm not normal but I'm doing good!
I haven't been running for a fair while now. I guess about a month or maybe more. I've noticed that I still have some residual fitness, so I can still make it around the normal block, but it sure feels like hard work.
When I was going regularly, I was thinking about making the block bigger again, but now just making it the whole way round is something to celebrate! I'm not sure if it is hard because I run first thing, even before breakfast. Perhaps I need to up my blood sugar before I go somehow. But as I run for vanity reasons mainly, using up some fat cell contents instead of breakfast seems a great benefit. Just a little running seems to have tightened up my midriff immediately!
I've certainly learnt from this to not let myself ever stop for too long again. I have lost the habit of getting out of bed to go running in the morning, and this week has been a huge struggle. I feel exhausted in the morning rather than enthusiatic.
In other breaking news the police are here today to interview a bunch of kids in my deaning year who broke into a shed last night. And another kid destroyed a kids bike helmet. And two others ended up in the girls loo somehow yesterday. Stupid stuff.
Great excitement in my camp as our school's first ever science fair entry won a prize - one entry one prize, the kind of record we want to keep.
I haven't been running for the last month or so and it has been really starting to show. One of the side effects of running has been clear zit-free skin, which seeing as I am nearly forty, and have had zits since I was 12, has been much appreciated. Lately the dreaded lumps have been returning.
But the main change has been the gain in weight. I have had to stop wearing one of my pairs of jeans because they are just so uncomfortable, and there is a pair of school pants also in temporary retirement.
So I went out on the road again on Friday, and again on Monday. I run every second day, so tomorrow is the next day to get out there. I do like how I feel on the run days. There is a combination of virtuousness, and a liveliness in my body that makes me feel happy.
Since I haven't been running I have got more flexible - I guess that is because muscles that are taunt are tight, and I haven't been stretching enough after runs. But I have definitely lost fitness, I struggled with the normal round the blocker, and have been doing the shorter version to help get back in the swing of things without overdoing it.
So now I need to make running a habit again - which is going to be pretty hard in this cold wet weather!, but worth it. For my vanity.
Tomorrow the bishop is coming to re-dedicate our chapel. I am playing keyboards for the psalm...
So I had better go practice!