The Long Run – A love story

When I started running I could hardly imagine myself doing more than about 5 km. In fact, my heart cringed at the idea of 5km. It was on the “I will do it someday” list. Looking back at my beginning runs on Strava, it does not paint a pretty picture. I was doing 3km run/walks at a blistering pace of approximately 9min/km.

But I was moving.

Those early steps was what got me moving. To be honest, I did not fall in love with running immediately. I mean, I have never ran before. Never. And at the ripe old age of 42, lifting your feet and running is hard. Especially when you cannot breathe. Your heart feels like it’s about to explode your eardrums. And you wonder how you are supposed to get back home, which is now an endless 1,5km behind you.

But then, the next day, you find yourself doing the same thing albeit with a little more structure. Run a minute then walk a minute… or maybe start with 30 seconds… And then, once you have caught your breath a couple of days later, and you have convinced yourself that you will, in fact, not die, you hit the pavement again. And again. And again.

Then you think; “Well would it not be nice to be able to run a 5km”. And you go to a Parkrun. Beyond your wildest dreams you actually finish it! You catch yourself buying running shoes. You buy a hysterically yellow running shirt that can be seen from the moon, because you run late in the evenings after work.

Then somebody mentions that a 10km race might be a good idea. The voice that mentions it sounds oddly familiar…

You realise that you will not be able to do a 10 km if you keep running 3km stints. So on a lovely almost spring Sunday morning you don your running threads and you embark on “A long run”.

My first long run was approximately 10 km long. My pace was reasonable but would not have scared a tortoise to a complete standstill. At the end of it I was dog tired. Really, really dog tired. But somewhere during that long run, my love affair with running started.

And the next weekend I did it again.

And the weekend after that again, and further.

It is now three years later. I have conquered the 5km, the 10km and the Half Marathon. I am 19 weeks away from running my first Marathon. I have had exceptional luck, and exceptional misfortune. I have been bulletproof and I have been riddled with injuries.

Will I change it for anything? No way!!!

And all of that thanks to the long run.

So what makes the long run so special? Well, a couple of things, I would imagine. Firstly, the pace. I mean, a long run is exactly that. Long. Slow. You are not running for speed. Coach Greg Mc Millan described it very well. He said that the long run is there to get your body used to the motions of running. To get the biomechanics re-adjusted. To get you ready for the 5 or 6 hours of running you will have to do during a marathon.

Secondly, I think it is the therapeutic aspect of running, and the overdose of it that you receive during a long run.

A long run is when I think. When I wonder. When I look inside and outside and when the two get to know each other. It is some quite Me Time. It is also where I get to know my body. Where tired legs and tired mentality start to feel different. Where you start to notice that your mind does not want to go any further, but your body says; “I’m OK.” And then the times when your mind says; “Let’s run another 5”, but your legs just don’t want to.

I am only now getting back to proper training after a horrid bevvy of injuries that ended in both ITB’s being completely shot. I have just started, gingerly, running a month ago. Doing the 5km stints and hitting the gym like crazy, hoping against hope that the injury monster will abate and let me be. I have started on the road to my first Marathon the day before yesterday. I am doing my first “long run” for almost three months this weekend. It will not be a very long run. It may not even be a medium long run.

But it will be a long run.

And I am looking forward to falling in love all over again.

Rhythmic Breathing – Run to the Beat

Running with one of my friends I notice that he does the little “Steam Train” breathing ever so often. Never thought much of it. Then I got rather nastily injured and had to sit around for two months waiting for recovery.

When I started running again my breathing was all over the place. Sometimes felt like I was about to pass out from hyper ventilating and sometimes like I was about to pass out from under ventilating. So I started researching breathing techniques, just to get myself into a rhythm again.

It was then that I came across some interesting articles on rhythmic breathing. There is an especially informative one on Runnersworld.com by Budd Coates and Claire Kowalchik. I will put a link to the article below. In summary, however, it deals with Rhythmic Breathing and how it can be used to prevent injuries while running.

In essence:When you start to exhale, more impact stress it put on that side of the body.
If your exhale coincides with the footstrike on a certain side of the body, that side will be subject to more stress than the other, and will therefore be more prone to injury.
Rhythmic Breathing can be used as a trick to alternate the footstrikes on an exhale.

The principle is as follows;

You inhale for a certain amount of steps and exhale for one less. Typically inhale for three steps and exhale for two. This will cause the footstrike for each exhale to alternate for each set, thereby ensuring equal stress on the body.

Is it easy? Well, no. Not to start off with anyway.

I started off, as suggested in the article, by walking. Breath in 2, 3. Breath out, 2. After a while it seems to take post and I decided to take the new technique to the road.

MAJOR DISASTER!!

When you have run “untrained” for such a long time it is extremely difficult to teach yourself a completely new way of breathing. Especially on the trot, so to speak.

So I slowed down (WAAAYYYY down) and started by mimicking taking in three short breaths and exhaling two large ones. After about three kilometers it felt natural. So I stopped thinking about it and tried for it to come naturally.

No way!!

Not 300m later I was back to my old habits. I checked myself and started with the pattern again. Kept it going till the end.

Next run, I almost forgot to do the Rhythmic Breathing altogether! Only caught up about 500m into the run. Same struggle.

Towards the end of this run I however seem to come to a conclusion;

I was following directions as detailed in the article. Inhale for three strides and exhale for two. I, however, have a rather large lung capacity. The three stride inhale felt more like hyperventilating than breathing. So I upped the inhale to Four strides and the exhale to three strides. BINGO!

Seems that because I was not breathing in fully, as I am used to, the rhythm just never caught on. Did not feel natural. Once I increased the inhale to a complete “lungs full of air” inhale, the rhythm came more naturally.

Make no mistake, the pattern is still flexible. Last mile dash? Pattern quickly turns into an Inhale for Two, Exhale for One pattern. More effort up a hill? No problem. Inhale for Three, Exhale for Two.

Has it become second nature? Not yet. But it is coming more natural now. And what has become almost second nature is me just checking in on my breathing every kilometer or so. If I have lost the plot, I just bring it back in line, monitor it for a 100m or so and then let it be for the rest of the kilometer.

I also find myself doing a quick “this is how it needs to be” breathing regime when I hit the road. Helps me to settle into the Rhythm. And while doing that, sucking and blowing loudly, I all of a sudden realized why my friend sounded like a steam train chugging out of the station. Goes to show you.

For the Runnersworld article click here