I get a physical every year. It’s a habit I formed over ten years ago when I was in college and I needed to get cleared for sports. It seemed like a good idea to me. I check up on my car every three months, I should get my body looked at at least once a year. My doctors regularly don’t understand the healthy blood work that always comes back; the normal cholesterol, the healthy blood sugar levels the surprisingly good blood pressure numbers when they look at adorable but obese me. They assume someone as heavy as me is a complete mess but for some lovely genetic reason, I’m doing all right in all those areas.

However, last year, during my physical, when I was wanting some medication for what I thought was a sinus infection, the doctor heard me cough and asked if I had a history of asthma. I confidently said no, that I remember having an attack once when I went for a morning run when it was cold and a bit wet for my California lungs, but never since. I did not disclose that it was because sitting on the curb desperately trying to breathe for a good 10 minutes until I felt good enough to walk the half mile home scared me from running so much I haven’t done it since. I chalked it up to the weather and running outside and have just stuck to treadmills, shallow pools, and mountain trails since.

I had to get a physical before every different sport season in college (two sports over three years – 6 physicals. 6!) so I would think that if I had something as big as asthma that it would have come up way back then but it didn’t even enter my mind that something like that was wrong and none of the trainers or doctors I saw then caught it. Any slow down I felt in the pool or on the court I chalked up to being not conditioned enough and just pushed through. You know, like the good bullheaded athlete I was/am.

Well, the doctor gave me an inhaler and told me just to try it out and you know what? It helped. A lot. Like, I could breathe for the first time, possibly ever. I’m not sure how I made it through 3 years of collegiate sports with Exercise Induced Asthma but I did. I probably could have performed a lot better if I had been able to, well, breathe, but better to know now than just go on thinking everything was normal.

Now that I know that it’s not my body giving out on me, just my lungs, workouts are a lot different for me. I pace myself, I listen harder to to my body and I obviously keep an inhaler handy when I’m at the gym or out and about. I’ve also discovered some handy essential oil blends that help a lot too.

I’m not sure if one can train themselves out of having asthma. I would very much like to think so but for the time being, for triathlete training, I’m having to start at the very beginning with breathing regularly and well.

So yeah – oxygen – it helps. I’m starting there.