sluggish 12K

Forgot to mention this but now it seems germane, possibly. I went to the doctor on Wednesday 2/2 for a follow up from my 1/7 visit re: the possible asthma. My peak flows have not improved at all on the FloVent medication (low dose inhaled steroid) and so the doctor and I wondered 1) do I really have asthma (aside from the exercise-induced kind, which I definitely do have), or 2) I have it and the dose is too low of the FloVent? The doc was thinking some pulmonary function tests might be indicated, but then again, maybe not. I am still coughing quite a bit though - the dry non-productive kind, and it gets worse w/exercise. If it wasn't for the continuing cough, the doc said he wouldn't be concerned. However, the cough gives both of us pause.

In order to have pulmonary function tests, you have to be off the FloVent for at least 2 weeks. So, since I was thinking it wasn't doing any good anyway, we decided that I should stop taking it and see how my cough is. If it is not better in a few weeks, or if it worsens, then we will get pulmonary function tests. If it gets better, we'll assume that I'm fine. All this means that Wednesday morning was my last dose of FloVent.

Obviously the stuff stays in your system for a while, but yesterday and today's workouts were a bit subpar by recent standards. Is this related to the FloVent? Probably not...but I'm going to keep tabs on it and see how things go.

On to today's workout. I had planned to do 12k, and that's what I did, even though I knew after about 4k that it was going to be a bit slower than last week. I started off well enough but just didn't have it today. I felt OK, so I'm not sure what the deal was! The only complaint going in was that I was a bit sleep-deprived (up an hour later than I'd have liked) and my abductors are slightly sore from the PT exercises I did yesterday (IT band preventive maintenance). Other than that, I felt fine, and the weather was even pretty nice by February standards at 33F (1C) and calm; the air quality wasn't bad at 16 (PM2.5).

The one bit of good news is that my legs felt less tired than last week. This week they didn't get too tired until about 10K, and the last 2K was not too fun (uphill...). Last week the last 4K was hard, so there's some improvement.

My time was slower though. Today I went 1:20:41 for 6:43/k, with ave HR 152. Garmin connect data here.