Life Run

Breathing in the cold air is tricky, it usually takes me about a mile or so to feel my breathing level out. Just keep at it and I am sure you will get used to it!

Welcome to the blog and Happy New Year! May you have a great running year and keep enjoying it!

I don't get to run in the cold that often. Such a bummer for living in AZ. But one thing you should do is blow your nose before you go. That helps with the breathing.

If breathing in cold air is a challenge, very likely the problem is that you are running faster than you should be even if the weather was normal.

Typical problem for a runner who is aerobically undertrained (probably 98% of all runners) is that the neural drive is much stronger than the aerobic capacity, so he runs way faster than what is ideal for his fitness. The solution is to back off. This provides a couple of benefits:

a) You can go longer. Since aerobic fitness develops in proportion to how far you how much more than in proportion to how fast, this helps fix aerobic fitness shortage.

b) Lesser chance of an injury. Injuries happen when the body is surprised by something. When you run short and fast, the body experiences a sudden spike of stress. When you run longer and slower, the spike is smoothed out.

c) Lesser chance of overtraining. Pushing the pace causes some of the subsystems of the body go into the red zone. If you do it daily, eventually those subsystems that are constantly in the red zone begin to fail. So you start feeling irritable, tired, unmotivated, fatigued, get sick easily, etc.

So perhaps the difficultly of breathing in cold air is a blessing in disguise after all. Just slow down to the pace that makes it not a challenge, even if that pace feels dog slow.

I definitely want to back up Sasha on this one. Most likely your issue is with breathing period, not just in the cold. Slow down to a pace where you can hold a conversation with a partner (or with yourself). That will guarantee that you are aerobically at the right pace.

Welcome to the blog. This is a great place that will help you a ton with your running. It was a year ago today that I joined (i think) and I am a far better runner than I ever imagined I would be in my life. And I really owe it to the people here. Welcome.

I'd like to say that I've been watching Junior's progress over the year, and he's come a tremendously far way. Keep up the good work guys.