Keith: July 15th - July 21st

The plan this week was for a cut-back week, but I was struggling with the heat in a big way. I couldn't quite figure out why I was having so much trouble with it until a comment from a friend about pollen levels made me realise that I hadn't been using my asthma inhaler over the last while. I started using the inhaler as a pre-emptive measure, and sure enough the next run was much better.

Unfortunately it was a case of too little too late as the next day I suffered probably the biggest asthma attack I have had since I was diagnosed. I suspect this was partially cumulative but also partially triggered by some maximal effort (see below).

Monday: 8.3m easy.
Tuesday: am: 5m+ easy, 4m Time Trial (21:22), 1m easy.
pm: 6.05m easy.
Wednesday: 13.18m jog.
Thursday: 14.42m steady / pm: 750m bike sprint.
Friday: 6.15m steady - aborted 1m effort after about 350m.
Saturday: 2.04m jog.
Sunday: off.

Total: 60.25m.

So Tuesday's time trial was supposed to be around 10m race effort, but it may well have been a touch quicker. Either way it was still a good effort, especially as the route included two decent hill climbs.

On Thursday we had Wattbikes in work as part of our work sponsorship of the RideLondon event with a 750m sprint challenge. As it was all for a bit of fun I decided to have a go, despite being about as far away from possessing a fast twitch fibre as it is possible to be. I guess having a go shortly after a 14m+ steady run was never going to make for a fast time, however even at that it was still particularly slow. At the same time, there was no faulting my effort as I pushed quite hard.

In hindsight, probably a bit too hard. The next morning I planned to do another test effort - 1m hard, however it was obvious straightaway that I was immediately struggling to move properly as my chest got tighter and tighter. I shut down and finished up.

As the day progressed things simply got worse and worse and I ended up with, as mentioned, probably the biggest asthma problems I've had since I was first diagnosed.

Saturday morning showed things were no better so I turned around just after the mile mark and came home.

I will be one of those looking for a change in the weather over the next week or so to hopefully help me get back to normal, but better to encounter these problems now than in a few weeks time.