The Great Ganesha

Last Thursday, I was complaining like hell. Well, I have to admit, despite high mileages this week, in fact, some of the highest I have done in a long time, the run wasn’t so bad. Tuesday-Wednesday-Thursday was 5-7-6, respectively. Not much, I know, but we’re building it slow and easy. It’s the first marathon for the RX Geek and it’s been almost a year since I ran my last half-marathon, and a year and a half since my last marathon.

Also, I realized a few things this week: I’m getting much more comfortable in doing the longer weekly runs (for weekdays, “longer” is 5+ miles). This may be because I am getting used to the distance, or because I have learned to breathe much better while running.

Initially, I was a little concerned about going over five miles on any given weekday. When I was training for New York ’05, I didn’t really do more than five miles on any given weekday, and that too, it was mostly indoors. This was primarily because I had torn my ACL in the summer of ’04, and wanted to take it easy. It’s still torn, but now my leg has somewhat adapted and I feel much more comfortable running in the outdoors. The leg operates at around 65-70% capacity compared to my good leg, and there are complications like plantar fasciitis that occur in the bad leg, but overall no serious problems. However, I digress.

I also realized the importance of regular breathing while running. When I started swimming regularly many, many years ago, I could not complete even one length. As I swam more, I realized that while I was fit enough to do several lengths, it was my lack of proper breathing technique that was getting in my way.? Having figured that out, these days, I do close to a 100 lengths (or 50 laps). Regular breathing to make sure that your muscles have enough oxygen really helps. It’s really that simple. Compared to your resting state, when you can get by with fewer, shallow breaths, you really need to take deep, fuller breaths when running. If you breath regularly, then you can avoid those feelings of mild suffocation from not breathing enough. This may sound simple, but I know that I had a hell of a time (and plenty of coughing fits) from not breathing.

The way I do it is exhale hard on one step, inhale on the other. I read somewhere that it’s important not to exhale on the same foot all the time, because that makes that particular leg prone to injury, and gives one side-stitches. So I alternate every once in a while – sometimes I breathe out on the left foot, sometimes on the right. If I do it regularly enough, I feel I can run much more comfortably, and for significantly longer periods of time. There are other patterns which people also advocate. This one works for me, so I’m going to stick with it.

The bottomline? Remember to breathe! It makes my Thursdays so much more tolerable…

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