Kevin, the last few Saturdays, has been running with Mr. Hoffman the 1.5-mile route back from the High School after doing their pliometric(sp?) exercises. Two of these times I’ve biked down with Kevin and biked back as well…..the second time I was surprised to hear Kevin breathing very loudly as we got closer to home. Don’t know if I would have called it wheezing, but certainly would have called it labored, but, figured that Mr. Hoffman’s really been pushing the pace and that Kevin’s just tired and gassed.
Ken stops by later and talks about the run…he had asked Kevin if he was tired in his legs or just couldn’t breathe, and Kevin said it was the latter. Ken, who’s paced Kevin before, says he’s heard Kevin wheezing (his phrase) more than once. Do we have a family history of asthma….maybe Kevin has exercise-induced asthma?
We interrogate Kevin a little more about his running after this question….he can point out a few times when he’s had trouble breathing like that….when he was working hard running the 5-mile fundraiser at Chippewa last year, at the Super Bowl run (apparently cold weather makes asthma conditions worse), and most recently at Ele’s Race.
So, go and see the doctor and it’s pretty simple….we can do it by diagnosis (do a bunch of testing and may not get an answer) or, we can do it empirically, give Kevin an inhaler (bronchio-dilator), have him take a puff or two an hour before he runs, and well, if he still has symptoms it’s because he’s tired, not because he has an issue. We’ve chosen that approach for now
We’re still going to do some of the testing…do some baseline respiratory work to measure lung capacity and see where that ends up. But, as cross-country season starts, we’ll see what happens…….
