I’ve been doing a little more running again lately. The jogging sort not the watch that flash go by sort and I find that I just don’t take in enough air. Everything seems fine, then I start to take shallow breaths and it all quickly falls apart. I get wobbly and need to slow down to a walk to catch my breath for a minute then off I go again. This was not going to do. Obviously. I needed advice, an answer. So I Googled it.
I searched the internet for how to breathe properly. Firstly, here’s the hot tip, make sure your search is set to moderate to safe content or THAT will get awkward… What I found was a whole heap of runner tutorials on breathing and how to maintain it. Excellent. Now obviously some of it is fitness based. But I also felt a bit like I panicked and stopped breathing properly. Like as soon as I noticed that I was getting short of breath, it got worse, does that make sense?
The interwebs recommended;
- Breathe through your mouth AND nose. The interwebs says to open your mouth and get as much oxygen in as you can.
- Run at conversational pace. For beginners {that’s me!} run at a pace that it is comfortable to talk.
- Breathe in patterns. Take a breathe in every 3 steps, exhale 2 later. You’re developing lung fitness here as well.
- Breathe from your belly. As a classically trained child singer, breathing from my belly is second nature. It never occurred to me to do it while running.
So wish me luck! I’m going to give all this a try to do my best to not overthink it. As I do. My aim is to complete week two of the Couch to 5km this week, including the run I have to make up from last week. My aim? At this stage it would be the Colour Run on the Sunshine Coast. Sort of. Mostly I get want to continue to improve my fitness and keep ahead of all the winter colds and junk this year. Strong lungs, that’s my real aim.
All you pros out there, got any tips?
