Jefferson Forest runner battles Vocal Cord Dysfunction

FOREST — There’s no telling how fast Jefferson Forest junior cross country runner Justin Resendes could be if he didn’t have Vocal Cord Dysfunction.

The condition has prevented him from finishing numerous races throughout his career and caused him to lose consciousness and collapse along the course in others. Those incidents have occurred when he tried to run through the symptoms, similar to a severe asthma attack.

“In earlier years, I was not as smart about dealing with it,” said Resendes, who has both asthma and VCD. “I would go out and push through it and push through it and I would black out on the course. I don’t think I ever stopped breathing, but it was really, really labored breathing.

“This year, I’m getting smarter,” he added. ”The first mile, I have to control myself and start out a lot slower. I know I’m in trouble when I look at my watch after the first mile and see that I’ve gone out at a five-minute pace or something.”

The condition may be as much psychological as it is physiological.

“A lot of it is a mental thing,”said Resendes, who must focus on running his race rather than worry about those around him. “I have to control everything. I can’t let the pace of a race make me anxious. The best thing I can control is my pace.”

Jefferson Forest coach Jerome Loy knows how hard it must be for Resendes to hold back and rein himself in right out of the gate.

“He just gets caught up in the excitement and wants to be with the leaders,” Loy said. “He’s a competitor. He likes to run and likes to win.”

But Loy doesn’t like finding out that Resendes has passed out somewhere on the course, with other runners showing similar concern as they pass him by.

“Sometimes, I’m afraid he’s going to die,” he said.  “I guess it is a life-and-death kind of thing. When you’re choking and you can’t breathe, it’s pretty scary.”

Resendes is usually OK running in races shorter than a cross country 5K, enabling him to thrive in indoor and outdoor track. He broke his brother Kyle’s school record in the 800 meters at the Region III meet at Broadway last spring, beating Turner Ashby runner-up Alex Ott, the 1,600-meter champion, in 1:57.26.

“I basically do cross country to stay in shape for track,” Resendes said. “I can’t actually run to the best of my abilities (in cross country) because I can never run an even-paced race. I always have to start out slow and finish fast.”

That strategy does help him to conserve energy for a strong kick late in the race. If he’s not experiencing trouble breathing, he will approach the final 800 meters of a cross country course as he does his best event on the track.

“(Sprinting is) my biggest thing,” Resendes said. “I can always catch people in the chute and in the last 800 meters, where I always (pass) a ton of people.”

Still, he is at a competitive disadvantage against runners who can go full-speed from the outset, especially in bigger races like Saturday’s annual Runnin’ with the Wolves Rocktoberfest at JF’s Wolf Branch Farm.

That may keep Loy from entering Resendes in events with higher stakes, such as the Oct. 28 Seminole District championships at Wolf Branch and the Region III meet at Lord Botetourt’s Greenfield Park, where JF competed in a regional preview on Wednesday without several of its top runners, who were batting a flu bug going around the school.

“It’s like 50-50 whether or not he’s going to finish (a race, so) I’ve had some tough decisions about it,” Loy said. “8We’ve been in some meets where, if we want to win, we’ve got to have everyone finish, and it was too much of a gamble.

“I’m really hoping he can finish the season on a positive note so he’ll have a positive feeling about running next year,” he added.

Resendes found out about his condition as a freshman.

“That year, two other teammates got diagnosed with it,” he said of Suzanne Sciarrino and Austin Vogt, who graduated from JF last year. “We all thought it was asthma. They got real close to quitting because they couldn’t run with it at all.”

Rachel McKeague, a senior basketball player and all-district cross country runner as a sophomore, stopped running this fall because she, too, suffers from both VCD and asthma, and also has a case of tendonitis in her hip.

“It really kicked in last year,” said McKeague, who stopped breathing temporarily in the season-opening Danville Jamboree. “Most races, I could not finish. I got to the mile and I dropped out.”

Lydia Brown, another female runner, also is showing symptoms of the condition. But none of the cases are as serious as Resendes’.

Resendes goes to a speech therapist, Denise Clapp, whose thesis in college was on the disorder.

“There’s not a lot of research on it at all (so) if I find anything that helps me to run with it, I tell her,” he said.

He always drinks plenty of water hours before a race — “I stay hydrated all the time,” he said — and likes running in the rain as the moisture in the air may lessen the severity of his vocal cord flare-ups.

“I thought it was because it takes the pollen out of the air,” Resendes said. “(Saturday) it’s going to be so cold, my muscles might tighten up. It’s a hit-or-miss kind of thing.”

There are some indications that the medications taken to treat asthma may trigger Vocal Cord Dysfunction.

“A lot of people end up getting VCD after having asthma,” Resendes said. ”There’s no real cure for it. Hopefully, eventually, I’ll grow out of it.”