I went from being in pain when I ran to figuring out HOW to run. If I had properly done my research I would have first figured out how to run and then started running – you live, you learn. Now that I have been running with the proper form I’m working on my breathing and stride.

I have a chronically stuffed nose, I mean CHRONIC. I can’t remember a time where I went more than two days without a stuffed nose, and no, I haven’t gone to the doctor about it (not that big of a deal). So I have been working on breathing through my mouth in a stable way. While looking into breathing techniques I noticed that a lot of the techniques involve breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. I have adopted a breathing technique where I take two short breaths in and one long breath out to imitate the shallow breathing that breathing in through your nose would achieve, while still getting the benefit of breathing out through my mouth.

I looked far and wide to see if my technique had any merit, and it turns out that there is good reason to breath through your mouth while running. This article details that breathing through your mouth allows you to relax your jaw and face muscles better than breathing through your nose. I guess I was on the right track after all!

While working on my breathing I noticed that I have been able to cut my running time down more, and run for longer stints without needing a break. I am up to running 2/3 km without needing to stop to walk because I’m tired. My running time has even come down to running 6min/km, another 40 seconds faster than last week!

For next week (assuming the weather holds out) I want to attempt to run a 10 km trail around a lake. I will not hold myself to running the whole thing but I am interested to see how well I will do on a longer run now that I am finding my stride (pun intended) in this running thing!