PODCAST - Can You Run a Marathon with Asthma
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[00:00:00] So can you run a marathon with asthma? Can you really run 26.2 miles without using your inhaler? Well,
The simple answer, yes, with the right training, good food, breathing techniques, and strengthening your lungs, you will have the tools you need to go from zero miles to 26.2. Even if you have asthma, and many kids and adults have been able to do this in their lives. I personally was told when I was four years old that I should never be a runner, and at that time I didn't really care ~about that.~
Running wasn't fun for me at four years old unless it was ~running ~after a soccer ball. ~While ~I was ~also ~told ~that ~I should never play soccer. ~Well, fast forward 30 years later and I have ran new, well, ~fast forward 30 years ~later, ~and this past weekend I ran two marathons in three days and ~ran 15 miles in between well, and ran ~15 miles in between.[00:01:00]
Yes, I ran almost 70 miles in three days and I didn't use my inhaler. And today I'm gonna distill down my four step process to going from zero to marathon, even if you have asthma.
Welcome to the Athlete with Asthma Show. I'm your host Johnny Ha, an ultra runner endurance athlete, and yes, a guy who's had an inhaler prescribed since birth. Despite doctors telling me I could never play soccer nor run a marathon, let alone a hundred K ultra. I prove them all wrong. This show is where I share everything I've learned from breathing techniques to mindset shifts to help you become the athlete and the person you truly want to be.
So if you're ready to achieve your goals, despite [00:02:00] limitations, let's get started.
And it all starts with something. Me and my friends call progressive overload. Fancy word, simple meaning. What this basically means is over time you are going to do more from an asthma perspective.
This means that you are going to challenge your lungs a little more over time. ~You're ~progressively overloading or increasing what your body can do.
You are progressively strengthening your lungs[00:03:00]
and can do this many different ways. When I was a kid, I did this on the soccer field. I went from having to use an inhaler before, during, and after ~my ~soccer games, to not having to use it at all. I did this with guidance from a healthcare professional that had alternative methods for asthma management, and I highly recommend that you consult with your healthcare professional to make sure that everything that you're doing is serving your body powerfully and keeping you safe.
~I am not a Okay. Keep it safe. ~I have a disclaimer in the show notes and in the description below this video on YouTube. How I strengthen my lungs is I ~first ~started by not using my inhaler before a game. I would let my lungs build endurance, and ~then ~when I started feeling the wheezing ~and my asthma hit me, ~that's when I would take my inhaler.
Well, after [00:04:00] doing this for long enough, I went from only being able to last five to 10 minutes without my inhaler all the way up through a full soccer game. And I've done the same thing with running over the years ~with strengthening my lungs and ~increasing mileage. ~Well, ~one of my heroes, David Goggins talks about in his books that he did actually go from no marathon to marathon overnight.
He also had some baseline endurance that empowered him to be able to take the 26.2 mile impact on his lungs and his body. I don't recommend that you go from zero to marathon overnight. I did not go from zero to a hundred mile weeks overnight. It actually has taken me a number of years and my most recent race, I am [00:05:00] running at least 66 plus miles.
and more realistically, I'm gonna get into the 70 mile range at a time. That has taken years of progressive overload, years of training my lungs and increasing my mileage. Does that mean ~that ~it's gonna take you years to train for a marathon? No, you can do it this year. ~And ~like me, when I ran my first marathon, you may have never ran more than four or five miles before.
Great. I didn't either. And in an 18 week progressive overload program, I went from never running double digit mileage to completing my first marathon. Now, that first marathon took me six and a half hours, and I walked about 10 miles of it. And you may walk 10 miles or more of your first marathon too. And that's okay.
'cause the next marathon you do, you're gonna set a [00:06:00] personal best and ~you are going to ~be even more powerful ~than before. ~Progressive overload is the first step. The second step has to do with the science of asthma, and it is inflammation management. Yet again, another big word or words. Very simple concept.
Inflammation is created ~in our body ~by different things. It could be different things we eat, it could be different factors in our environment. It could be dust, it could be smoke, it could be ~eating fast food, could be eating dairy, could be eating, could be eating ~dairy.
It could be mold in the environment. ~Inflammation is really what asthma. ~Asthma is fueled by inflammation. The more inflammation ~in your body, ~the more likely you are to have an asthma attack. The key to inflammation management is twofold. Very simple. Increase
anti-inflammatory [00:07:00] substances or food.
And environmental factors
and decrease
inflammatory
food, environmental factors.
I highly recommend you do both of these things, so get results even faster by increasing anti-inflammatory food. That means eating super foods, like I talk about in my episode, all about superfoods, all asthmatic should try. Chia seeds, blueberries, greens, cruciferous vegetables like cauliflower ~and bro, ~and broccoli, It has been shown that eating foods that decrease inflammation in your body reduces asthma symptoms drastically, and by decreasing the amount of inflammatory foods in environmental factors in your body. Reduces asthma symptoms even more so by avoiding the fast food or decreasing how often you eat it, in addition to eating broccoli and blueberries and these [00:08:00] amazing anti-inflammatory foods. Works together to improve your asthma symptoms works together to power your body towards your 26.2 mile finish line.
This is why we do both ~of these ~things. Avoiding training when it's smoky out, avoiding training in areas that cause outdoor allergies. The time of year when your outdoor allergies flare up may not be the best time to ~run or ~train for your ~next ~marathon. Number three, the training program itself for your first marathon. I ~highly ~recommend ~that you start with ~at least an 18 ~plus ~week program. ~My first marathon was 18 weeks, and really how it looks is.~
~You wanna ~walk as often as possible. I highly recommend ~you walk ~daily. This could ~just ~be ~walking ~around the house, getting up more mindfully while ~you are ~watching tv, ~while you're ~playing video games. ~When you are, you're ~spending time with ~your ~[00:09:00] family, ~this means ~you're also gonna ~need a run. And you're going to ~need to run at least three times a week, ~and, uh, ~three times is ~actually ~enough.
If you want to be an overachiever, ~you can ~go up to five. I currently run six times a week and take one day off. Three to five times, will get you to your 26.2 mile finish line three times plus walking daily will get you there. You ~are ~also ~going to ~need to do a long run every week basic training programs for integrating long runs is gonna start with a long run of four miles and you're gonna go all the way up to 20 miles and you're going to have weeks of build.
~And ~weeks of rest. ~So you're basically gonna ~build for three weeks ~and ~then rest one. So ~we got ~build rest. So what this could look like [00:10:00] is you long run can be 4, 6, 8, and then four, and then we have eight. 10, 12, 8. We keep building like that. I highly recommend that you use this principle and ask Chat GPT or your favorite AI tool to build ~out ~an 18 week program for you.
Making sure you're walking every day, running at least three times a week and integrating long run. As we get closer to race day, we have something called a peak week, and for a marathon, peak week means 35 total miles that week. If you're running seven days, five miles a day. 35 miles may sound like a lot now, but ~when you are ~16 weeks into [00:11:00] a program, ~which peak week is gonna be about ~two weeks before the end of the program, or two weeks before your race, two weeks before race. Your body's going to be able to handle 35 total miles ~'cause ~you've progressively overloaded ~and ~strengthened your lungs, increased your mileage, and you've been walking daily.
Your body's going to be able to do this. Then ~you're going to ~taper for two weeks.
~This is two weeks. Taper means you go ~from ~running ~35 ~total ~miles in a week to dropping to 20. And then dropping to five to 10 the week of race day.
Hey, friend, I wanted to take a moment to ask you a quick question. Are you struggling to lose weight due to your asthma? If so, I get it. I used to run marathons and [00:12:00] still kept gaining weight. It wasn't until I learned about the three pillars of healthy living that everything changed,
so I put together a healthy living guide that you can access absolutely free by clicking the link in the description. This guide shares these amazing three pillars of healthy living that you can easily integrate into your life. To start losing weight and live healthier today. Click the link in the description or go to athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your free copy.
Now let's get back to the rest of the [00:13:00] show.
Let's talk about race day. This is number four.~ So ~we've put in the work, ~we've ~progressively overloaded ~our body. We've ~decreased ~the ~inflammation ~in our body, we ~fueled our body ~so that we can show a powerful on race day. ~We've gone through our training ~program, our 18 plus week ~program. Here's what race day should look like.
You want to have a great night's sleep, eight hours plus of sleep. And focus on getting really good sleep the entire week. This promotes recovery and healing in your body helps keep your lungs strong, your body's powerful. You're going to want to eat a powerful breakfast. You're gonna want to have a combination of carbs and anti-inflammatory foods.
~So carbs plus anti. Inflammatory foods, I'm allergic to peanuts and nuts, so I opt for~
~I,~
~so ~I ~personally ~can't have ~the piece of ~bread with peanut butter ~on it. That is ~a traditional thing that people talk about having on a race day. Instead, I eat either [00:14:00] oatmeal.
I love smoothies. In my oatmeal and smoothies, I'll make sure that I am getting blueberries very powerful for our bodies. Chia seeds, hemp seeds.
Et cetera. I have a whole podcast episode about the best super foods for asthmatics. I highly recommend you check that out. If you want something that has carbs, 'cause you're gonna need carbs as energy on race day.
You want anti-inflammatory foods. ~Wanna avoid, you wanna ~avoid foods that ~are gonna ~create inflammation ~in your system. ~For me, that means avoiding dairy. For a lot of people that may mean avoiding dairy. You also want to just fuel yourself with powerful sugars from blueberries and other fruits, not necessarily processed sugar.
I remember when I was a kid and I played soccer. We'd have orange slices at halftime. In 2024, I pairs like crazy near the end of my ultra race that empowered me to win that race. [00:15:00] Natural fruits are so good for you, especially on race day. You also wanna look at having hydration with you and drinking tons and tons of water.
When ~we're ~looking at hydration though, and depending on how far you're running, so if you're running a marathon, you may not be used to how your body's gonna react when you get to the upper miles. Even if you've completed your training program and you've done your 20 mile run. So what you wanna do is make sure that you have hydration with electrolytes and.
Sometimes this will come into play with marathons. It definitely came into play with my ~a ~hundred K in 2024. I cramped up at mile 37 because it was a really hot day. I was drinking a ton of water and having a ton of electrolytes. My liquid IV electrolytes, and I still cramped up. Because I wasn't getting enough salt, so I ~actually ~[00:16:00] added salt to ~every one of ~my camelbacks.
Moving forward. ~And ~this year I'm training like that, and for ~all ~my races ~now ~I add salt in addition to ~my ~electrolytes. You wanna stay hydrated.
You ~are ~also ~gonna ~want to have some support there. Family, friends, people that can support you. You're gonna want to ~bring some food with you. ~Bring food. ~And I say this because even though most organized. Because ~even though organized races typically have food, it's not necessarily the healthiest food.
So you're gonna wanna bring something of your own to keep you fueled. That isn't gonna create inflammation in your system. My fiance will actually make these homemade power bars for me that don't have very much sugar, they're very powerful with different seeds, some carbs, natural sugar from honey, some sun butter.
Really good for me during the race. Maybe ~it's ~pretzels. And still go to the aid [00:17:00] stations and fuel up with whatever the healthiest thing they have.
~There is, ~maybe it's a banana, ~maybe, ~maybe it's an orange, ~maybe it's a banana. ~For me, bananas can create some inflammation, so I try to avoid bananas during racing. But maybe it doesn't create inflammation for you and the simplest way to tell if it creates inflammation is, does it make you more mucusy?
Does it have an impact negatively on your asthma? And then the last thing and most important thing is bring your inhaler. Remember, even if we've built up our lungs so that they're strong enough to take us through the entire race without using our inhaler doesn't mean we shouldn't always have our inhaler with us.
~We ~always want it with us no matter what, and bring anything else that your healthcare professional. Has prescribed to you to keep you safe. Always check with your healthcare professional. If you're looking to run your first marathon, I highly recommend you consult with a doctor, your healthcare professional, make sure it's [00:18:00] safe for you, and if you want to work with me a little more directly, I have my free healthy Living Guide linked in description. Below this video, I go through my three pillars of healthy living in this guide, movement, tracking and accountability, which pair great with marathon training.
It's gonna take you the last in two minutes to digest this guide and start integrating it into your life today. ~So ~I highly recommend you grab your free guide. It empowered me to lose 40 pounds, keep it off, and become an elite athlete with asthma completing not only marathons but ultra races of a hundred kilometers plus, which is 62 plus miles. You can grab in the show notes or it's linked in the YouTube description below, or go to athlete with asthma.com/healthy-living-guide to grab your copy ~today. ~I'll see you in the next one.
Thanks for tuning in to the Athlete [00:19:00] with Asthma Show. I hope today's episode inspired you to overcome any perceived limitations you may have. Remember, your health and wellness journey isn't about perfection. I. It is about progress. So I invite you to take a small step right now towards your goals, and if you found something helpful here, make sure to subscribe, leave a review, and share the podcast with others on a similar path.
Until next time, keep challenging yourself and redefining what's possible.