Team Asthma UK

As you may have seen if you read my blog post last week, I have decided to go for it and take part in RideLondon, which is now in 3 weeks time - eeek!

As part of that I have joined Team Asthma UK, in order for my efforts to support other people who also want to lead a healthy active life, but their condition is holding them back.

I’m very lucky in that my asthma is pretty mild now. It was worse when I was younger - I had to use two inhalers morning and night, every day, and I really struggled when I got ill, quite often having to take steroids in order to be able to breathe. It also stopped me from really doing much exercise, because I hated feeling out of breath and being last at everything.

However, things did improve as I got older and actually persevering with exercising has really helped my breathing, improving my lung capacity and my overall fitness. Now I find that my asthma is really only triggered by certain things and day-to-day doesn't really affect me.

Triggers include:

being ill
cold weather
high intensity exercise
pollution/smoke
cat/dog/horse hair

But for some people, the severity of their asthma can be much more serious. Every ten seconds someone in the UK has a potentially life-threatening asthma attack and three people die every day - something which I didn’t really realise!

While I have never had an attack severe enough to be hospitalised, I know all too well the tight, gasping feeling of trying to catch your breath - I used to describe it as "having an elephant sitting on my chest" when I was a child - so I would really love to help make a difference to those people who are more seriously affected.

Asthma UK work to stop asthma attacks and, ultimately, cure asthma by funding world leading research and scientists, campaigning for change and supporting people with asthma to reduce their risk of a potentially life threatening asthma attack.

As I already had a ballot place, it was easy to join the RideLondon Asthma UK team - there is no registration fee or minimum fundraising amount. I am just looking to do what I can!

I’ve been sent an Asthma UK cycling jersey which I will wear on the day, and will look out for the charity cheer points around the course too for an extra boost. If there are any other cyclists riding with Team Asthma UK please do let me know!

If you would like to support my cycling challenge and donate to Asthma UK please follow this link:

uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MissWheezy

Many thanks 🙂