Breathe with me

Gold light shot through with gray. Georgia, 2021.

Last week I had a great conversation about running and breathing as a barrier to it with

Dr. April

here on substack. As a follow up, I wanted to build out my thoughts on learning to breathe while running. Here they are: this one’s for you,

Dr. April

! Let me know your thoughts.

---

When I was eight, I started running for itself alone. Not as part of a game, or to get from place to place, but just for itself. That was October. That first run was blue and cold in morning light but soon I started running after school and I learned to love the golden light of afternoons. As the weeks passed, the light shifted again and the afternoon gold became shot through with watery, bleak undertones. Winter’s glaring gray was coming, laced into the gold. It was on a run colored like that when my dad asked me if I wanted to learn how to breathe.  

It sounded like a strange question, but I knew what he meant. All runners everywhere and anyone who has tried to run will know what he meant. Breathing while running is different from breathing while standing or sitting or sleeping. You have to work at it. It becomes conscious, rather than unconscious. It is always easier to stop, to settle your breathe. But if you want to run, you must not settle it; you must manage it. 

My dad and I trotted down the street in front of my house. It was a wide, gray street with no lines painted on it and no sidewalks. Pine and elm and oak trees towered above us, sometimes almost meeting above the middle of the road. The houses on either side sat back from the road with little forests between them. These houses did not form a neighborhood. It was simply a road with private houses on it. We were alone on it. 

My dad taught me to count my steps in common time. 1-2-3-4, 1-2-3-4. Innnnnn-outttttt. Innnnnn-outttttttt. Eventually, he said, you stop counting. Quickly, in fact. Soon, you’re just running and breathing roughly in time with each step. If you lose control because you get distracted or you go up or down a hill, you can start counting again and even pant: in-in-outttttt; in-in-outtttttt. It’s okay to pant if you have to, he said. 

Other runners and coaches would later tell me that it’s not okay to pant. Shallow breathing is inefficient; inhibiting your lungs’ ability to deliver oxygen to your muscles. That’s true. I know it’s true both because it is logical and because you can feel it. When you pant, you’re breathing hard but somehow you don’t get as much oxygen as you seek. 

But the thing is: we all lose control sometimes. Leaning into shallow breathing and counting your steps as you do is a way to impose control when you’ve lost it. From there, you can slow down your breathing to the innnnn-outtttttt, innnnnn-outtttt, and from there, after a while, you can stop counting and just run again. 

Because that’s the goal: to forget that you’re breathing hard and simply accept that you are. The hard breathing, the strain on your lungs, is a feature of running, not a bug. My dad used to say that he ran because “It’s hard to worry about work when I’m not sure where my next breathe is coming from.” He was kidding, but he also wasn’t kidding. The stress and immediacy of running helped him manage the stress and immediacy of his work life. It might do the same thing for you. Focus on your breathing; accept that it’s hard; and count your steps. Know you’ll lose control sometimes; be okay with it. Get back into control. These are my tricks to breathing. 

I’ve never had anyone else teach me how to breathe. Some coaches tried to tell me to breathe in through my nose, out through my mouth. When I was pregnant, I did that just because breathing while running while pregnant was so hard that I would try anything. But it never worked for me. I always return to my four count: 1-2-3-4, innnnnn-outttt, innnnnn-outttttt. That’s my trick. That’s my way back to control. 

If you can, get away from whatever stress you might have. Count your steps; count your breath: go run. 

Golden light shot through with gray. Los Angeles ~2022