allergies and seasonal drops in performance

JZ, I suffer from the same sort of thing -- bad allergies in the springtime and my running suffers, too! I started taking allegra (not allegra D) and it really helped me tremendously. I take it during the spring when everything is blooming, and it hasn't affected me.

You should definitely get tested to find out what you are allergic to. I could never run at Stanford because I am allergic to eucalyptus (sp?) trees. Whenever I ran near these trees, my chest would feel like I had a rock in it, I would get fatigued very easily, and also have burning eyes, and itchy skin. It is frustrating, especially when you are in shape.

You could also get allergy shots, but I wouldn't recommend this unless you are living in a particular place for a long period of time.

My advice would be to see a doctor. A simple drug like allegra or claritin might work for you, but look out for side effects.

Your probably in a bit of a "tail spin" from not taking any break after your indoor season. Try a couple days off instead of simply logging more miles and doing workouts that you are already tired going in to. Some easy threshold for a couple weeks wouldnt hurt either.

I'm glad I'm not the only guy getting his ass kicked recently. A few posters have named my exact symptoms, (back of the throat drying up being the worst). Right now and late summer/early fall are my worst times of year. I've always felt that there was nothign i could do except gut it out. I've wondered about taking meds but the couple of tmes i tried they either didnt work or made me feel worse. Dosn't seem like anyone has had much luck with the different kinds of medications, claritan etc.

JZ,

I also see a significant seasonal variation in performances. Go back through your log and write down the exact dates and locations (city is good enough) of your best and worst races and workouts over the course of the past season. Next, go to:

http://www.wunderground.com

. On this site, you can access all sorts of historical weather data by zip code, but I suggest you note, for each workout/race listed above, two pieces of information: (1) the dew point; and (2) the daily high temperature. The site is a little user un-friendly, but the info is there. Next, for each of those days, take the dew point divided by the max temperature. If your problem is at all similar to mine, you will notice a definite pattern that your workouts and races are much better when that ratio is low. This calculation is similar to humidity but captures some aspects of air quality as well. Pollen counts are notoriously unreliable. I'll keep an eye on this thread... let me know if you notice a pattern. Good luck.

Thanks to all of you for all the information. To the poster who suggested that I am fatigued after not taking a break after indoors, the 8:01 3k was my one and only race of the season. This was off of aerobic capacity/base training and up until 3 weeks ago I was feeling great. Also, like I said earlier, on certain days my legs feel great. I.e., not burnt out at all. I don't think I would record my best ever 5 x 1000 session (the week before Mt. SAC) if I was burnt out. The pattern is continuing: yesterday after a couple of days of rain I had a very solid 4 x 1 mile session (on gravel @ 4:44 pace with 1 mile float recovery @ 5:50 pace; 7 miles total) but today with a high pollen count in the air (180 for birch) I felt like I was going to fall asleep on my feet (during my morning 5 miler). I was going to let this thread die, but I think I will update it now and then for those who are interested. Cheers.

An additional symptom that I've had in the last couple of days is the feeling that I have something really dry (like dust or fine crumbs) stuck in the back of my throat. It makes me cough like crazy and water doesn't help. The only thing that works is trying to accumulate enough saliva in my mouth before swallowing (I know there might be some jokes about this one).

I ran the Vancouver Sun Run yesterday and although it wasn't as fast as I think I'm capable of right now (I was 4th with 29:55) I at least didn't blow up a quarter of the way in. I still felt like I wasn't getting enough oxygen in with each breath but I did the best I could by really focusing on a constant breathing rhythm right from the start. I've now made appointments with an allergist and a respirologist. I won't be competing again until June 4th and by then (if previous years are any indication) I should be feeling better again, but hopefully I will have a better idea of had to control my symptoms come next spring. I'm going to continue running my main session of the day in the morning until my afternoon runs begin to feel good once again. Interesting that my one solid race of the past month was in the AM. Unfortunately it wasn't raining. I must have been one of the few runners out of the 50 700 participants who was hoping for cool and wet conditions!

JZ, great job at teh Sun Run (considering). Let us know how the treatment goes.

By chance will you be running any of the HH all-comer's? I plan to run a bunch of them.

Thanks mile master. I will probably run a couple of the HH meets (maybe one 800 and one 1500), but I haven't decided which ones yet. If you see me at one come over and introduce yourself.

Have you been taking any kind of allergy medication? I suffer from allergies big time, haven't really looked into how it may affect my performance. I wake up every morning conjested and groggy. And the real allery season is a few weeks away. I was wondering if over the counter allergy medications were fine to take, and are there any currently banned. I wouldn't want to be randomly selected for a "pee test". Any advice would be great.

Well here's my update on this condition of mine. I finally have some answers after seeing a sports med doctor at UBC. We weren't able to determine exactly what I'm reacting to in the environment, but whatever it is it's causing my lungs and nasal passages to become very inflamed. The results from the bronchial challenge tests that I took (both methacholine and EVH - drops of 13% and 5.5% in FEV1 respectively) show that I don't actually have asthma (you need 20% and 10% drops to be officially diagnosed) but they do show that my lungs are definitely more reactive than normal. So, the result of this diagnosis: He started me on anti-inflammatories (corticosteroids - not on the banned list and not ergogenic) for both my nose (Flonase) and lungs (QVAR). He said that if we were on the right track I could see positive results within a few days. Well, within 24 hours it was like night and day! I went out for an easy run around a 12 km loop that I do quite often and ran 43:38, a minute and a half faster than I have ever gone before. My fastest ever for this route at this "cruise" effort (as fast as I can run while feeling effortless) was 45:09 and was a week and a half before my 8:01 indoor 3k. Lately though, feeling as terrible as I have been, I've been running between 2 1/2 to 4 minutes slower than this. I thought that this might have been partially psychological, but since then (I started taking these anti-inflammatories on Wednesday) every run has been incredible. A week ago I was feeling sluggish and breathing relatively hard at 4:00-4:10/km and now I'm floating along at 3:30-3:40/km and feeling truly effortless. Now it remains to be seen how this will affect my races for the rest of the summer, but if training has any correlation at all to race performance ... Needless to say, I have a renewed sense of excitement for the rest of the summer ahead. I’ll keep you posted if you’re interested. Cheers,

Jerry Ziak

Jerry,

in case you're interested in trying to get at the cause instead of just fighting the symptoms with drugs, I thought I'd chime in.

Many people have food allergies/sensitivities that they're not aware of. This could be what's causing your issues. Common culprits are things like nuts, dairy products, mushrooms, wheat/gluten, alcohol, caffeine, etc.

Ask yourself this question: is there something in my diet that I'd never part with? If there's a food you crave and have every day (maybe coffee? maybe chocolate? maybe nuts?), there's a good chance you're actually allergic to it. Try to cut it out, cold turkey, and see if things don't start to clear up in a week or two.

There's some other ideas I can throw your way if you're interested and you drop an email address.

Pete,

I would love to get at the cause rather than just treat the symptoms. Other than vitamins you might call me an extreme minimalist as far as the type of treatments and supplements I go in for (not saying this is definitely a positive in all situations). I'm going to continue searching for what it is I'm reacting to, but the fact is, what I'm experiencing is a definite seasonal reaction. There have been other race situations at other times of the year that suggest an allergic reaction, but this is mainly a spring/early summer thing for me. So, it just doen't make sense to me that it's a food allergy that's giving me these problems. Any further ideas on this is definitely welcome though. Thanks for the post.

Jerry

Food allergies can be exacerbated by seasonal weather conditions, particularly variations in humidity. You might be allergic to something in the environment that's only present at certain times of year, or you might have a food allergy that becomes most obvious in certain conditions that happen to be prevalent during those seasons. Not saying it's one or the other. If it's food, it's devilishly difficult to get to the bottom of it (figure out the culprit(s)), but very easy to solve. I'd say more, but I'd rather not elaborate on this forum.

Cool. I'll drop you a line in the next day or so. I'm killing myself pushing to get some final work done for a course that wraps up with a deadline by the end of day tomorrow, so I'll be pushing past midnight tonight and probably again tomorrow. After that's done I'll put a few words together.

Meanwhile, that's awesome news that the treatment is working.

Thanks Pete. I look forward to talking more with you about this.

Jerry

Jerry, do you train to train or train to race. Some people are "racers" and some are "trainers". Maybe if you did not think or over analyze things as much as you do your performances would be better than simply mediocre. Racing is instinctive, why not let your training be that way too, and not analyze every run or workout you do.

I agree that I do think about my training a lot, but this is BECAUSE I want to be more than mediocre. However, how does thinking a lot about training have anything to do with a health problem? The thing is, I also agree with you that training should be instinctive. This is why I run so many of my runs by feel and label 9 of my 11 runs per week right now as "cruise". This means that I don't go out the door thinking that I will run such and such pace but instead just go out thinking that I will let my body simply take me for a ride. For the last couple of months this ride hasn't been that enjoyable, no matter how relaxed (and instinctive) I've tried to be. And then overnight I'm flying again. During this down period I did a lot of thinking to figure out why I was feeling so crappy, but I didn't over analyze the efforts themselves. In any case, I first started this thread to see if there were other people out there who have had the same problems that I've been experiencing over the years. Perhaps my "over analyzing" and the solution that this has led to might help somebody else turn in the right direction.