Breathing book finished

I thought I would fly through this book! I bought it in March, at the Eryri Harriers presentation night. And it’s accessibly written. But there is a but. As it is about improving your breathing in order to improvey your running, it has practical components. It contains a fair number of tests and exercises. Tests as in: how flexible are your hips? How flaring are your ribs? What is the maximum speed you can run at while breathing through your nose? And exercises to loosen up your ribs, align your spine and all that comes with it, and train your CO2 tolerance. 

Firstly; if you read it in bed, you regularly have to stop as you’re not in the position to do these tests and exercises. And sometimes, when you’re reading elsewhere, you might be a bit taken aback by instructions to do some exercises from chapter X, then do an exercise from the current chapter, and then do the exercises from chapter X again to see how much of a difference that makes. 

I’ve finished it now, though. And made a little summary in my phone. I can now put it all into practice! And I started doing that right after the presentation night, slowing my breathing during runs, which I really liked and which probably improved my performance. And I started nose breathing on my commute. But now I can put the entire book into practice. 

I already did a warm-up for my ribs before the Trentham race. Did that work? No idea! But I ran a good time. 

So what now? I should keep going with the nose breathing and the breathing warmups. And try to slot in some CO2 tolerance exercises, like hill sprints while holding my breath. And just hope I manage to book steady progress with it. 

I haven’t set a new distance PB since the (easy) one in March. It suggests I have so far not quite made as much progress as I hoped. But if I keep going, maybe that will change! And I don’t think there are any negative side effects to learning to breathe more efficiently…