Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Work and other four letter words ;-)

Work is really frustrating the hell out of me at the moment; I'm a software developer who works on mobile apps but basically I haven't got anything challenging to do at the moment; just the usual day to day mundane stuff. I think I need a change, but I'm not sure what to try next. I wish my dad was here, he was good with career advise. Maybe you guys can help? I will write more when I get a minute.

Anyway, here's some pics from the Manchester Run, I enjoyed it, the crowd was fantastic as usual, but I'm a bit disappointed in my time -1:07- that's no improvement on last year although I was on IVs up until the day before the race so maybe they tired me out? I certainly found it a struggle after the first 5K. Rachel ran a good race and finished in 58 minutes although she was disappointed too, we're never happy ;-)

Friday, May 6, 2011

Breakthrough! and Sods Law...

As you may or may not know for the last two-three years I have decided to start doing more exercise in a bid to help improve/stabilise my lung function and to hopefully stop it declining between IVs.

This is now my 3rd year entering the Manchester Run and for the training I have been going for runs about 2-3 times a week without much enjoyment because I always got out of breath and had to stop every 2 minutes. But last week I discovered why: I had been breathing the wrong way (while I was running) I had been breathing the way I imagined athletes should breath -holding the stomach in and puffing out my chest, breathing through the top of my lungs (a bit like David Hasslehoff running across the beach in Baywatch ;-)) what happened was I would run for about 2 minutes then I would have to stop and catch my breath and start again.

Anyway, I read somewhere (embarrassing ;-)) that breathing through the diaphramatic or tummy breathing is more efficient for getting oxygen, and well, it seemed to work, all of a sudden, I had much more energy when I was running. Maybe now I can I can actually start to enjoy running and improve my running times?

Unfortunately, not at the moment because the entire family has caught a rubbish cold and I have had to go on IVs. I've also got a partial gastric blockage so running is too painful. There is also 9 days to go before the Manchester run, doh!

At the outpatients my FEV1 was 2.45. I was put on Ceftazadine, Tobtramycin IVs and Movicol for the blockage. Boo!...