allergy victories, running and love in a bass

Choked up all kinds of crap yesterday during and after running a pushed
4 miles.  I have been out of the groove for a month while I applied
myself to the building project.  Now that the guest house is almost
done, I'm reclaiming some other things that I like to do and one of
those is running.





Allergies bugging me was how I first got the idea to run.  It's a long story, but wtf, the audience is small.  :P





Every year I used to get an allergic response to the pollen in the last
week of April.  As the humidity went up and the airborne particulates
increased, so did my watery eyes and congestion.  After a few weeks of
this I would become overwhelmed with fatigue and shortly after that I'd
be showing colour in my mucus and then I'd get sick with a sinus
infection and in a nutshell I was a basket case for the summer.  I
hated it most because I was so low on energy.  I could sustain no
physical activity of any intensity and if I cut the grass I was down
for three days, sleeping and trying to recoup enough strength to carry
on.





I have a great physician.  She's a marathoner from South Africa.  She's
wide open, empathetic and strong.  She has impeccable taste in
clothes... but that's another matter.  :P





When I saw her a few years ago for some antibiotics she winced and said
she hated treating sinus infections because the blood flow was so
limited in that area that it was extremely difficult to make the meds
do the deed of wiping out the bacterial infection.





I submitted that it might help the process if I was to get my head hot
enough to drain my sinus through gentle aerobic exercise.  She lit up
like a light bulb and thought that made great sense.  So since then
I've been quite successful in avoiding much of the grief I've come to
know is associated with my allergy to spring and summer. 





In my three or four weeks since over training and then the construction
work where there really wasn't enough left of me to add any additional
activity physically, I've been slowly watching my sinuses follow the
same path as years ago.  I slowly became more and more lethargic and
the sneezing, watery eyes and runny nose were raging back into play. 





Running was the last thing I felt like doing on Tuesday.  Thursday
wasn't much better, but yesterday I knew I had broken the allergies
grip on me.  I choked up so much thick phlegm during and after that I
could hardly believe I hadn't been aware of it being there.  As I was
struggling to cough this crap up, I was thinking how I would be willing
to bet that I'd have no significant allergy symptoms today.  Voila, no
sneezing and my eyes are clear. 





I'm not taking any chances though.  I need to have my energy and the systemic antihistamines help with that.  I also picked up a refill on a prescription for some nasal spray
that seems to work well without drying me out so badly that I bleed. 
Some have done that and I've trouble enough with a honker this size
without that bother.





It is great to be running again.  My legs are tired tonight, but I'll
have all day tomorrow to stretch out and do strength stuff while I
watch endless soccer games at M2's tourny in the city.  6:25am is going
to come too quickly.





A friend just bought an accoustic bass.  I wanna try!