Platypus' Beginners Guide to Running

jpaul said:
re: breathing during swimming - is there a strategy to apply a similar technique whilst running; the mechanics of swimming with the periodic breathing opportunity feels as though it gives a more efficient control of heart rate/pace/energy-burn, but without that discipline during running or cycling you can take breath when you want .... giving system instability
(yes the environment in the pool is invariant versus run/bike & can also use a hrm/pm - but even so ; maybe listening to music/metronome can help)
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Just breath naturally through your mouth, don't think about it. For your standard running you shouldn't have any labored breathing so it doesn't make any difference what you do. When running hard you are trying to maximize oxygen intake, so just breath is frequently with deep breaths, keep you head up high so your chest is open. Your body knows what to do, just let it do its thing. With swimming you are forced to breath in small time windows and there is a fairly fixed period to do it in. There are choices of what periodicity to breath in, and that will depend on swim speed and ability (some swim drills suggest no breathing for an entire 25m length!!!). When running things like foot cadence is far too high to do anything like breathing out when stepping down, so any mechanical link is void.

I expect you are just running too fast on your easy days if you are worrying about breathing. You should be able to have a full conversion with your running partner (or have a long chat with your wife/gf/mate on the phone), without the breathing interfering with talking.
 
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D.P. said:
Just breath naturally through your mouth, don't think about it. For your standard running you shouldn't have any labored breathing so it doesn't make any difference what you do. When running hard you are trying to maximize oxygen intake, so just breath is frequently with deep breaths, keep you head up high so your chest is open. Your body knows what to do, just let it do its thing. With swimming you are forced to breath in small time windows and there is a fairly fixed period to do it in. There are choices of what periodicity to breath in, and that will depend on swim speed and ability (some swim drills suggest no breathing for an entire 25m length!!!). When running things like foot cadence is far too high to do anything like breathing out when stepping down, so any mechanical link is void.

I expect you are just running too fast on your easy days if you are worrying about breathing. You should be able to have a full conversion with your running partner (or have a long chat with your wife/gf/mate on the phone), without the breathing interfering with talking.
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Odd you say about the mechanical link being void, I naturally link them up. I never do left in, right out, as you say the cadence is too high for that, but I've somehow gotten into a foot landing based breathing rhythm which then just varies based on pace, so low pace I'd be quite relaxed where the in/out spreads over 4+ strikes, then at a high pace maybe as high as per 3 strikes.
 
D.P. not too worried about breathing - just thought, maybe I should think about it more, and maybe running would deliver more of that zoning-out feeling I get with swimming.
I can conduct the conversation whilst travelling, as you say.

Subsequently googling it - so it is called rythmic breathing - this seemed an interesting article - with proposed strategy of in:out-hale at 3:2 or 2:1 strikes to alternate the, apparently more stressful, exhale across both legs - I am intrigued to see if I have sub-consciously already fallen into a particular pattern.
balancing the stress across both legs, I guess, may give performance gain ,although this article did not seem to address that.
(need a dynamometer in each shoe to detect strike force and see how that correlates)

-need a smiley escape character.
 
jpaul, I've seen articles like the linked but seen many more that basically say ignore breathing. The problem is peoples cadence varies naturally from around 160-190, and your own cadence will vary a similar degree based on pace, slope, wind and if you are on trails the terrain/rocks underneath. Similarly, the amount you need to breath obviously varies with pace but also with fatigue, heat, slope and training stresses. So trying to fix a breathing pattern related to foot-strikes is not easy because everything is highly variable. Conversely, your brain will send a strong message when the CO2 levels in your lungs reach a high enough concentration that you need to breath out (its not actually the lack of oxygen that causes you to breath but CO2 build up, which is why breathing out feels so relaxing when you are out of breath). If you are forcing a change to your breathing pattern then you are overriding the brain's signals that are measurements of your lung's actual requirements. When swimming this is mandatory or you swallow water, but when running you have the luxury of inhaling at any time.
There is some obvious compression of the chest/lungs on each foot-strike, and that will relate to the diaphragm and some core muscles, but I have never really seen any running coaches worry about it at all. There are more important things in running, footstrike, arm swing, foot-rotation, hip-strength, core-strength, straight back, head-up, relaxed shoulders, heart-rate etc.


As for performance, your performance running in a race will be directly related to how much oxygen you can get into your muscles per minute. The more oxygen your muscles receive the more energy they can generate, and for marathons if you have well oxygenated muscles then you will burn more fat and wont hit the wall. Anything that is reducing the oxygenation of your muscles will be detrimental. Almost everything about training is related to increasing the amount of oxygen your muscles get - stronger more efficient heart, more blood vessels in the muscles, etc.

For easy runs it doesn't mater too much, I have a 3:3 pattern. The only thing I pay attention to is if my breathing rate increases to something like 2:2 then perhaps I need to slow down, but heart rate is better indicator of effort
 
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Anyone know how I can recalibrate a strava run from when I paused my watch?

Strava seems to think I ran a 4.37 mile as I paused my watch and unpaused it later on in the run. It's corrected the distance but the mile was probably around 6.30ish. (I can work it out if it's changeable from the elapsed time).
 
I've modified GPX files before when I've accidentally left my Garmin paused on cycle rides but it required using a friend's identical ride to fill in the missing data.

If it was only a training run I wouldn't worry about it. A friend recently did a run that had him clocking a 2s mile.:D
 
if you are adept with excel can load them up as xml and make any changes (I previosuly extracted/graphed some hrm sections) - may not be faster than running again though.
 
Yeah, you can export the GPX file and edit by hand (also liekly some software out there), then re-import. Likely not worth the effort though.
 
Good result for myself today.

Stockport 10 Mile in 1.05.06. Hurting now and have a bit of discomfort with my stomach but made up with the time.

Ran the same race last year in 1.09.25 so over four minutes knocked off my time and good PB. And ran the same race in 2014 in 1.10.15.

Anyone else race this weekend?
 
IndigoGorilla said:
Good result for myself today.

Stockport 10 Mile in 1.05.06. Hurting now and have a bit of discomfort with my stomach but made up with the time.

Ran the same race last year in 1.09.25 so over four minutes knocked off my time and good PB. And ran the same race in 2014 in 1.10.15.

Anyone else race this weekend?
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Good going! Always nice to see a big chunk of time come off your times

neilw said:
Next race is the Victorty5 Miles in Portmouths I'll be trying to go sub 35 there. Its the 70th Anniversary of the race so it's been going on awhile!
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Ran 33:35 for the 5 miler so another good PB. Started slowing up quite a lot after 4km, so I'll need to work on that. I may of gone out too fast.

https://www.strava.com/activities/793281879

I've registered for the Red Bull Wings for life World run, anyone done it before? Looks like an interesting concept.
 
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neilw said:
I've registered for the Red Bull Wings for life World run, anyone done it before? Looks like an interesting concept.
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I ran Wings for Life this year.

I was doing it with a friend who is in a wheelchair so I ran with her rather than going at my own pace but we still managed 21 miles before David Coulthard caught us!

I may do it in 2017 to see what I can do alone but I'm not decided yet. It is a really good format though. The global winner did 80+ miles before getting caught.
 
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Shamrock said:
I ran Wings for Life this year.

I was doing it with a friend who is in a wheelchair so I ran with her rather than going at my own pace but we still managed 21 miles before David Coulthard caught us!

I may do it in 2017 to see what I can do alone but I'm not decided yet. It is a really good format though. The global winner did 80+ miles before getting caught.
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80 miles is crazy given the car is progressively speeding up. I've used the calculator on the site and set a target of 30km, which should be running just under 5min/km for about 2 1/2 hours.

How do you get back to the start I guess there's a load of buses following
 
Yeah they have bus stops along the route but it's possible you get caught between stops so have to run (if you still can) to the nearest one.:D

It was scorching hot when I did it too which didn't help but there are lots of hydration/energy stations on the route.
 
Signed up for the great North run next year to raise money for diabetes UK (also a T1 diabetic, feel free to donate haha!) so getting some training in.

Have done the coast to coast cycle last year and I'm also often out and about on my bike but running is a cometely different game.

Question is - has anyone joined a gym solely for running? I'm not a massive fan of running on roads due to the stop/start nature and the closest place I like running is around 10minute drive away. Theres a decent gym at the bottom of my street practically. Obviously nearer the time I'd get out and about to get used to it.
 
UnworthyBean said:
Signed up for the great North run next year to raise money for diabetes UK (also a T1 diabetic, feel free to donate haha!) so getting some training in.

Have done the coast to coast cycle last year and I'm also often out and about on my bike but running is a cometely different game.

Question is - has anyone joined a gym solely for running? I'm not a massive fan of running on roads due to the stop/start nature and the closest place I like running is around 10minute drive away. Theres a decent gym at the bottom of my street practically. Obviously nearer the time I'd get out and about to get used to it.
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Having been forced to use a treadmill today due to heavy rain just above freezing - don;t do it. Running on a treadmill is the most soul destroying activity known to man, i would rather get waterboarded in Guantanamo.

There is nothing wrong with stopping and starting when out running, in fact n general it beneficial as it will act as a form of interval training. You will quickly learn routes that have fewer stops or less traffic.
 
true - its not impossible though - I used to do a lot of treadmill running and didn't find transitting to the road to much of an issue

it is MUCH more boring though

that said - sometimes this time of year - depending on mood I go Treadmill/gym, in fact sat, sun and Monday night I all did 5-6k in gym instead of outside

did a gentle run at lunch - but its "hilly-ish" 1 mile efforts tonight @ faster than 5k pace, 4x1mile
 
Yeah, forgot to say, form a training perspective a treadmill is fine. it is not quite the same and getting some real running done outside will help but the treadmill is good for controlled training.

One issue I have heard of is that since the foot impact is so monotonous in a treadmill you can over use some muscles, under use others and you end up imbalanced. Even on road running this can happen to a lesser degree, trail running less so. Mixing the training up is always the most beneficial.
 
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