Sophomore Nirav Adunuthula remembers the moment from his eighth-grade P.E. class.

They were out running on a dirt path when he suddenly bent over and began wheezing. He dropped out of the run shortly after, the victim of an asthma attack.

One year later, the scene was different. Adunuthula had decided to join the cross country team. At the Fremont cross country meet, he kept his asthma in check and sped past the other runners. His breathing remained constant and steady. Remarkably, he not only finished the mile-long race, but also set a personal record of 5:14.

“I felt elated. I had been trying to catch up to my friends who were faster than me, and I finally achieved a time that put me in reach of them,” Adunuthula said.

Even though he has suffered from asthma since the age of 5, Adunuthula has never let the breathing condition get in his way of his passion for running.

Adunuthula’s first felt the pain of asthma when he was living in India. His asthma gradually worsened as the high levels of air pollutants in urban areas made breathing more difficult, though he says he hardly noticed at the time.

“It never really hindered me at first because you don’t really do much exercise when you’re small,” Adunuthula said.

Eventually, the heightened pollution led to breathing problems at night, forcing Adunuthula to carry a nebulizer, which is a mist machine, and an inhaler by his side at all times.

By happy chance, his asthma faded away when he moved to Washington state in 2009 and “seemed like a distant memory.” However, six years later, his asthma returned near the end of seventh grade, right before Adunuthula moved to Saratoga in 2015. During eighth-grade P.E., he found himself out of breath after only a few laps around the dirt track.

“It was easy to jump to the conclusion that asthma had returned,” Adunuthula said.

He had to use his inhaler again, or he wouldn’t be able to run at all. Adunuthula said that there have been many instances in which he has forgotten to take his medicine and suffered an asthma attack while running.

“I would start breathing heavy and I wouldn’t be able to run anymore,” he said.

However, he saw his recurrence of asthma as merely an obstacle to overcome.

Sophomore Sanskar Agrawal, also on the cross country team, said that Adunuthula is one of the fastest sophomores on the team. Agrawal believes that asthma is actually one of the reasons Adunuthula is successful as a runner.

“I think [asthma] helps him because he wants to prove people wrong,” Agrawal said.

Adunuthula thinks the condition has given him the added motivation to continue to pursue his passion. In the future, he hopes to break a 5-minute mile and improve his 2-mile best time of 11:59.

It was also at cross country practices, where Adunuthula has met many of his current friends. The sport has allowed him to enjoy running as a social activity.

Adunuthula believes all aspiring athletes should understand that physical conditions like asthma are possible to overcome. “Just try something. When you find something you enjoy, just do it, even if there are obstacles in the way,” he said.