154.2 - Back Home Again & Is It Asthma?

We had a fun spring break. It went so quickly, I can't believe we're home already.

A few things to note:

• Tomtom is the best travel invention EVER. DH bought a tomtom navigation thing last year but this is the first trip I've been on with it. If you do any out-of-town driving, this gadget is a must. We never got lost, never took wrong turns, had zero fights about the map or which exit to take (this thing is a marriage saver), found cool restaurants easily and on the fly, and traveled everywhere we wanted in a big city with ease.
• DVD players for the car are the 2nd best travel invention ever. The kids were mindlessly happy for the majority of the trip.
• Vacation exercise is tough. I ran once, on Monday. I had big plans, mind you, big plans. You should have seen all the workout clothes I packed. By the time we were done with the fun each day, and after I'd eaten dinner (which was always huge and included dessert, every night) and we'd swam in the hotel pool, I had nothing left for a workout.
• DoubleTree's chocolate chip cookies are the devil. I love that hotel chain, but their cookies are evil, just evil.
• A 6-and-a-half year old and a 2 year old can fight in the backseat like they are teenagers. What is it about the car that turns little people into little monsters?
• Indianapolis is a great place for a family vacation. We went to the Children's Museum two days and the Zoo one day, and there was a lot more we could have done with the kids. We'll be going back this summer to see the Koalas at the zoo.
• I ate way too much, just about at every meal. Thankfully we had an active trip and weren't laying around on the beach or I'd have gained a ton of weight.

Speaking of my weight, it looks like I didn't gain anything from last Friday's post to today, but I had gotten down to 151.8 on Easter Sunday before we left. So I actually gained 2.4 pounds, which frankly is not bad for the amount of food I consumed. It'll be back off in a week or so if I stick to a decent eating plan.

I'm hoping to get a run in this afternoon(maybe 4 miles, maybe 5? we'll see how I feel), on the treadmill unfortunately because this is the winter that will not end. It's only in the 40s today and there's a strong wind, so it's freaking cold out there. It's almost April, people. Where is the spring?

My training plan calls for 10 miles this weekend. With my lack of base mileage this week, I'm contemplating doing what next weekend calls for--a 7 miler--and doing my 10 miles next weekend. I'll probably wait to see how I feel tomorrow when I run and if it feels good, I'll do 10. If it doesn't, I'll stop at 7.

In other running news, I think I may have exercise induced asthma. Gotta talk to the doc first, but it hit me last Saturday as I was running 6 miles that I could not get enough air in my lungs. And this wasn't the first time I've experienced this feeling of needing a deep breath but not being able to dig deep enough. And the run was hard, but not in the usual way. I felt fatigued and tired early on and slogged my way through the miles, a lot like I did on my 9 miler the week before.

I talked to DH, who has asthma and uses 2 inhalers regularly, about how I felt while I was running, and then I went to WebMD (the great self-diagnosis tool that it is) and I've got 4 of the 5 symptoms (generally I don't cough, but everything else was going on with me). I'm going to make an appointment with the doctor before I declare that my lungs are broken, but I'm hopeful from reading the WebMD article that even elite athletes perform with asthma, so I can keep on running even if I have this. And I sort of hope I do, because if it's not asthma then I'm going to have to rethink the whole concept of distance running and my lung capacity.