Having asthma is kind of like winning the lottery, except it happens to more people and instead of money you win a chronic difficulty in breathing. I wouldn’t say I’m proud to be an asthmatic, but it’s not information I’m ashamed to share. In doing so, I often discover others who are similarly afflicted, and upon doing so we instantly go from being perfect strangers to perfect strangers who know something insignificant about each other.
My asthma attacks are experienced in a variety of forms, ranging in severity from a shortness of breath to “holy shit, I’m dying”. You can liken an attack to breathing through a straw with your nose plugged; depending on how bad the attack is, the straw keeps getting smaller, going from the wide one you get with a Big Gulp all the way down to those little ones you get with a coffee at a crappy diner. Cycling with asthma is like breathing through those straws while doing wind-sprints up a flight of stairs.
This straw-breathing effect is caused by the contraction of the airways leading to the lungs. The traditional treatment is to use an inhaler to suck in medication which dilates the passages and restores them to a size that allows for comfortable – if still sub-normal – breathing. There are newer, more effective treatments but many of them scare me because they cite side-effects like spontaneous death.
After 38 years, I’ve come to understand a bit about what causes my attacks. There is the cold-induced sort – which can be quite severe – but in my case will usually resolve itself throughout the first hour of riding to where it becomes a nuisance rather than an impediment. I also have acute attacks, which for about 32 years I believed were caused by an allergy to sawdust. These don’t resolve themselves and the condition gets worse until I intervene with an inhaler or a visit to the Emergency Room.
It wasn’t until I moved to Seattle and started having more frequent severe attacks that my doctor here pointed out that it was “crazy” to suggest I’m allergic to sawdust and inquired as to what kind of quack I had been visiting in Minneapolis who would tell me such a thing. He pointed out, quite logically, that I was simply allergic to something that was aerosolized in sawdust. As it turns out, this same element is present in whatever pine trees give off from October to May. Thanks to the Pacific-Northwest’s monopoly on pine trees, I now carry a rescue inhaler with me whenever I go training during these months.
The thing about being a Cyclist with asthma is that Cycling, as an endurance sport, is quite dependent on the rider’s ability to breathe well. In fact, I’ve found that the single most important factor to how well I’m riding on any particular day, regardless of how fat or out of shape I am, is how well I’m able to manage my breathing. The exciting bit is that training with asthma is a lot like resistance training; you get used to a reduced ability to draw oxygen into your lungs, thereby restricting the supply that gets to your muscles. Its like reverse blood-doping. You get used to it and your body adjusts to the reduced supply of gun fuel. Then, on days when the air is clear and warm, you ride like you’re on EPO. I call this the “EPO-Effect”.
I read some time ago that 80% of Pro Cyclists are diagnosed asthmatics who hold a prescription for an inhaler. This makes for a remarkable attraction of gifted endurance athletes to the most breathing-dependent sport on the planet. Surely this is because the EPO-Effect makes asthmatics strong like bull, not for the dilating effect the medication has on the air passageways.
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I haven't won the lottery in like 43 years! WTF?
I had a bit of asthma as a kid. I don't know if you out grow it or not. I did develop an allergy to lead and explosions later in life. As a young private on my junior leadership course, I had a Sgt that didn't know he had pneumonia and he ran us into the ground one night in the cold winter rain for being ...well young privates. His lung collapsed but he bounced back after losing it. He did cut down to 2 packs a day. That helped.
I weighed 140 once. I was in grade school. I think that being Jan-like in the off season is completely natural. Coke, E, beer, crazy parties. I just draw the line at Rapha. As The Badger once said, "Who gives a shit how you ride in April. July is what matters, so slow the fuck down."
If someone is giving away free Rapha, please don't send any my way.
@Nate I put my last $2 in on Wednesday and I didnt win either.
@VeloVita
With the exception of the YJA, completely agree.
@coloradonate
@Dan_R
I love those stories about him yelling at his team who were not fat and out of shape. Theories are spun that Hinault had so much knee trouble because he had so much work to do to catch up in the Pre-Season, and grinding so hard on big gears when he was overweight.
@Dan_R
It's all about April. That's why he never won De Ronde.
Good post. I learn something totally new and challenging on blogs I stumbleupon on a daily basis.
It's always useful to read articles from other authors aand practice
a little something from otherr sites.
Evidently a third of Team Sky are asthmatic. The study discussed in this article suggests that exercise induced asthma is quite common in endurance athletes. I've been thinking about asthma lately because of Katie Compton's recent attacks and I'm not sure if I'm surprised or not by the findings of the study.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/dec/28/asthma-elite-athletes-study-swimmers-cyclist-eid
@JCM
Doesn't surprise me one bit. There's a chicken-and-the-egg problem here, as well: Do they develop asthma as a result of intense exercise, or are elite endurance athletes more likely to show symptoms?
A lot of junior athletes start out because their doc sent them exercising to help their asthma. My girlfriend ran Track and XC in highschool, and a lot of her teammates and rivals started for those reasons. Maybe there's even a hidden "hypoxic training" bonus involved if you grow up with restricted airways?
Another factor could be the fact that a highly-trained endurance athlete can actually hold an effort where lung capacity becomes the limiter - and that could show symptoms that would otherwise remain hidden.
On the other hand, long and hard training in dry air (or chlorinated - the study also looked at swimmers) could cause an otherwise healthy individual to develop symptoms.
All I know is that in my N=1 case, I was completely asymptomatic until I started exercising intensely. I still don't consider myself an asthmatic, but after a long dry ride it's often difficult for me to breathe deeply, and sometimes just breathing can be painful after efforts.