I'm a bit concerned that I may be experiencing a mild form of Asthma after intense cycling efforts. This first occurred last year during and after my first Criteriums, it feels like I have to carefully breath in or I will suffer a bought of dry, painful, coughing. When experiencing this, my airway generally feels tighter, and it is much harder to get full, deep breaths. I don't really start wheezing but end up coughing a lot, for many hours.

I hadn't thought too much about it because normally this is a very rare occurrence for me during indoor rides, but when I'm outside, in the currently cold dry air, simply riding along at 200 watts for more than an hour induces this, and quite badly, the same symptoms seem to occur for many hours (up to a day afterwards).

So, my main concern is I have 4-5 Criteriums scheduled for April, would an OTC bronchodilator like epinephrine be effective? Is it UCI race legal?

If I were to go to my doctor, would it be a difficult, lengthy, and expensive process to have any kind of diagnoses and treatment for this? My concern is the symptoms only seem to appear after prolonged moderately intense aerobic exercise outside or extraordinarily intense intense indoor exercise, and even then, it does not occur 100% of the time.

Does anyone else have experience with something like this and may have some general advice they would like to share?