I was a runner for a long time, ran through high school, through college and a bit of post collegiate. Got pissed, didnt do well, then due to some circumstances, started smoking. f***in stupid. Not addicted, its out of boredom and what not...anyway, how long does it take to recover from about 5 months of smoking? Does that shit leave the system or what?
camel joe wrote:
I was a runner for a long time, ran through high school, through college and a bit of post collegiate. Got pissed, didnt do well, then due to some circumstances, started smoking. f***in stupid. Not addicted, its out of boredom and what not...anyway, how long does it take to recover from about 5 months of smoking? Does that shit leave the system or what?
Umm...nobody becomes a "smoker" if they're not addicted to it. Get honest with yourself about your addiction to smoking so that you have a better chance of staying smoke free. And, I agree with you, it was "f***in stupid".
Good news is you can be good as new again as long as you keep the cancer sticks out of your mouth. The thing with smoking is you don't need "shit [leaving] the system". You just need to stop before any serious damage occurred. 5 months isn't a long time to be smoking, so just run and have fun. Welcome to the world of the not "f***in stupid".
Everybody and every body is different. You might have done some minimal damage but the tar and crap will clear itself out for the most part and if you start running it's a faster process. But you can't undo what already has happened. All you can do is quit immediately, get back into running or something else active, purify whatever residue is in your body, hope there is no scarring of the lungs, and go from there. Whatever ill effects you'll have are already done, and there is a chance you might have no ill effects. Some people smoke for years and run really well, such as Priscilla Welch. But she also had breaast cancer ten years ago. Any correlation? Who knows? Others smoke for 6 months and die of emphysema in their 60s. You could have slightly scarred your lungs, have no permanant damage, live your full life expectancy, but end up with a 30 second slower 10K PR than your potential would have been if you had never smoked. No way to measure it, just get off the cancer sticks now there buddy.
Unless you were a real heavy smoker I don't think there will be that bad of damage, nor do I think it won't be anything that time and a healthy working of your lungs wouldn't heal.
It will probably be a bit difficult at first, but I'm going to say it's going to be more of a mental problem. As in you're thinking you're going to run horribly from smoking, so do run horrible.
Good luck, quit smoking asap!
Steve Jones smoked for years before he got into competitive running. He did allright. I wouldn't worry about it too much. Just go out and run.
didn't Bill Rodgers smoke at one point also?
You'll never be as cool as you were when you were smoking. You're a damn quitter if you ask me.
I would recommend some nice smokeless tobacco, kodiac perhaps. that way you can run and be addicted to nicotine without the lung issues.