Running after having smoked

[iamdjdz]

Well really stopped smoking.

I started smoking when I was 14 (nearly 10 years ago) and stopped 4 months ago. I can already feel a difference.

However, I struggle sometimes with running over distance with the main pain being in my breathing, and difficulties with regulating my breathing and coping with the pain in my chest.

At the moment I have only began to run and am doing 1.5 miles in 13.25 and 2.2 miles in 19.27 so a reasonable pace as far as I'm concerned. However I am finding it hard sometimes to do these runs, twice I've been out and had to walk for a bit after 10 minutes just to get my breath back and stop the pain (and can feel my heart working really hard).

What is the best solution for me, my aim is to be as fit as I possibly can be and I'm doing a lot of other exercise such as swimming (I have no problem swimming 60 lengths of a 25m pool without stopping but can't run more than 20 minutes?) and cycling. So I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Does anyone have any tips or experience or lung exercises etc that might help me?

Cheers.

 

[StonedPenguin]

Swimming, Specifically under-water will help.

 

[iamdjdz]

At the moment I swim twice a week and do a lot of underwater until my eyes hurt, do breaststroke with normal breathing but can't get into a rhythm for front crawl so I'm attempting to improve it doing maybe 5 - 10 lengths each time I go, does this help?

 

[Zip]

Just keep running and it will become easier

 

[Jonny69]

The main thing is building your cardio fitness. At first your heart will struggle to keep up with your legs and it'll get you really out of breath. Best thing to do is to stick with it, but slow down. Start your runs at what feels like a snails pace and speed up later in the run once you've warmed up

Edit: eventually you don't get the lung burn. It seems to be something your lungs have to get conditioned to do and, again, it's mainly down to building your fitness levels.