Better than Expected

6:00am: I ended up getting to bed a lot later than usual last night after I got caught up doing some work on the computer. Surprisingly, I wasn't that tired this morning and my lungs felt much better than yesterday morning. I ended up pointing the stand alone fan towards the lower half of my body last night, so I think that helped. I didn't cough up nearly as much mucus this morning and my lungs didn't feel as tight. After the bleed yesterday, I had no idea how I would feel when I woke up. Thankfully, it was better than I expected.

J Bell was chomping at the bite this morning ready for her walk. It's funny, when my alarm goes off I'll always hit snooze at least once. It almost feels like I'm cheating the system somehow by getting 5 extra minutes. Anyway, when that first alarm goes off, you can instantly hear Jezzabel's collar clinking down the hall way as she sprints to my door. She then lays there whining until I let her in. Some people have wondered why she doesn't sleep in my room. The reason is because when she did sleep in my room in the past, she then thought that she could lay on my bed while I was gone. I would then end up with a big dark circle on my comforter in the spot she would lay. So I nipped that in the bud by banishing her from my room at night and making her sleep where dogs were created to sleep: On a big fluffy overpriced more comfortable than my bed "doggy pillow". Excuse me while I go barf.

Total Distance: 1.9 miles Time: 32'45"

6:00pm: We took off for our walk first today in the hope that the after-work crowd would thin out at the gym. The walk went well and I wasn't coughing all that much. There was a stretch when I did have a slight attack, but that was after we got a whiff of this strong scent of charcoal. It literally took my breath away and it felt like it caused my lungs to itch. It was a very strange sensation. Anyway, that was about it as far as the lungs went. My foot felt good as well and we were able to keep a pretty good pace. At the end of our walk I was breaking into a good sweat and my legs were tingling. It was a very good feeling! I'm hoping to run tomorrow even though it's leg day at the gym. My feet and legs are feeling good and I need to take advantage of that.

Total Distance: 3.0 miles Time: 51'30"

7:00pm: We left for the gym right when we were finished with our walk. You know that after-work crowd that we were trying to avoid? Yeah well, we didn't. It was hard to workout today because it was arm day and half the time there were no dumbells racked. Well at least the girly weight that I do. We were also on a bit of a time crunch cause we still needed to eat and get our American Idol fix. We really powered through the gym. We often did exercises back-to-back and even combined two tricep lifts into a super set. It absolutely kicked my butt. I definitely got a good workout in, and Mandi was enjoying the pain I was in. Current Weight: 185 lbs.

Total Distance Walked for Day: 4.9 miles

Running So Hard That I Made My Lungs Bleed

6:00am: I ask this question because last night I not only had the ceiling fan going, but also a stand up fan by the side of my bed. This morning when I woke up, I coughed up more crap than normal and it was darker in color. It was pretty thinned out, but there was A LOT of it. So it got me to thinking, was the mucus already deep down in there and the fan helped to get it out? Or is the fan some kind of irritant that somehow creates more mucus that otherwise wouldn't be there? I would love to get some feedback on this and hear if anybody else has experienced this with fans directly blowing on them while they sleep.

The walk went well and my foot is starting to feel better. It may be tough to get a run/walk in later because of my Bible study, so I may have to run or walk a little at the gym. On my walk this morning I continued to bring up quite a bit of stuff and got into a couple of coughing fits. At one point I had to stop walking because a little bit of coffee started to come up and I didn't want to lose my "cookies". For me, I have to be very conscious of walking, running, or working out on an empty stomach. The problem is, if I start coughing to much, I will lose whatever is in there. I've heard other CFers complain about the same type of thing, so I know I'm not alone.

Total Distance: 2.1 miles Time: 38'45"

3:00pm: Things have been absolutely crazy today with CFF stuff and so on so I knew I was going to have to really bust it out at the gym today. My Bible study doesn't start until 6:45pm, but because of traffic, I have to leave by 5:15pm. I know, stupid. Anyway, the gym was fantastic today and I really lifted hard and pushed myself to the max. I tried to really force myself to do more reps on every exercise than the previous week. And that is exactly what I did. I really need to start bringing a towel. There were a couple of times that I thought somebody shot me in the eye with a BB gun. I'd be sitting there doing upward rows and then all of the sudden I would have the urge to drop the bar and take the stick out of my eye that somebody so pleasantly shoved in there. Of course, I would discover after the set that it was only sweat, but nonetheless, it hurt.

I also knew that I would need to get my run/walk in at the gym because there wouldn't be time for it tonight. I started off walking .24 miles just to warm up. I then kicked it into high gear. I was determined to break my own personal treadmill record of .6 miles straight today. I was at .63 (.42 straight) when I let out a loud and deep cough. So much so that the dude next to me jerked his head around like I had just fired a gun. He would have been really shocked if he would have seen what came up with that cough. Yeah, you guessed it, blood. Good ol' B-L-O-O-D, blood. Now, it wasn't pure blood and was definitely streaked in with my mucus, but I thought it would be a good idea to back down a bit. I slowed down the treadmill to a walking pace and walked another .17. That put me at .8 total miles. Well, that wasn't good enough for me. I said that I would break my own record, which of course didn't happen, but told myself there was no reason to not run the full .6+. I sped the treadmill past the speed I was running at before and did another .2 miles followed by .1 of walking. Did you follow? Basically, I didn't break my record, but I ran a total of .62 miles and walked a total of .48. Stupid blood.

Total Distance: 1.1 miles

Total Distance Run/Walked for Day: 3.2 miles