The barefoot Sith

I read an interesting article yesterday: Josh McDougal Is A Perfect Example Of What Is Wrong With High School Track by John Raucci. In it, John puts forward a number of ideas, 2 of which caught my eye: barefoot running and nasal breathing. He is also a big proponent of aerobic training, which, if you've been following this blog, you'll know I'm already a convert to.

I had a gentle day today, ahead of the Purbrook Ladies 5 race tomorrow, so I thought I'd put a couple of ideas to the test.

Breathing. It's an interesting idea John has about nasal breathing. He says that we don't breathe properly, we tend to breathe too shallowly and have a tendency to hyperventilate. By breathing only through the nose, he says that the oxygen exchange is better, we breathe more deeply, we are more relaxed, and ultimately we run better, which is, let's face it, what most of us are after. Conversely he says that it slows improvement - I don't quite follow that one - is that meant to be a good thing?

As I was reading his article, I tried at first simply shutting my mouth and breathing through my nose. Even sitting in the chair relaxed, I found this hard to do and felt like I was suffocating. As I read on though, he talked about breathing like Darth Vader. The penny dropped! I think what he is referring to, I've seen elsewhere called Yoga breathing - breathing from the diaphragm. When trying to mimic Darth Vader, you are exhaling from the back of your throat - it feels like you are breathing out through your mouth, which you clearly aren't as you have your mouth tight shut. It's weird! If you think about breathing through your nose, your breath is shallow and the air comes whistling out of your nostrils. You don't seem to be able to get enough air in and out. Think Darth Vader, and it feels like you are breathing direct from your throat - no air seems to be coming from your nose - no whistling, yet your mouth is shut. You have to pinch your nose to convince yourself that air really is exiting your nostrils.

It appears that there is more than one nasal pathway. I need to check an anatomy book for that one, but I think that is secondary to the real effect of breathing like Darth Vader. What I realised I was doing was breathing with my diaphragm. For some reason Lord Vader had got me using my stomach muscles to breath. I described this to my piano teacher this morning, and she confirmed this. She teaches clarinet and voice, and the importance of proper breathing is something that is taught early on. To make best use of your lungs you must breath with the diaphragm.

For my run this morning, I thought I'd give the nasal breathing a try.

The first, and quite strange, effect I noticed is how much slower you breath. This is something John Raucci mentioned and I didn't fully understand when reading the article. I think because you are limited in the rate at which you can draw in air, you are forced to breath much deeper, using the diaphragm, and so your breathing is long and drawn out. Whereas normally I'd be breathing in and out every 2 or 3 paces (depending on the speed I was running), with nasal breathing I was breathing in over 4 paces and out over 4 paces - almost half the rate. I have to say though that it will take some getting used to. I found that every few minutes I had to breathe through my mouth to settle myself. John says it takes a while to adapt.

Will I adopt this? Probably not. However, I have read in several other publications the importance of proper breathing - breathing with the diaphragm, belly breathing, yoga breathing, call it what you will. Nasal breathing, Darth Vader style, appears to be a good way of teaching you to breath deeply. I may not take it to the extreme that John describes, but there are elements there that I may be able to usefully incorporate into my running.

I'm curious to see whether I can control stitch this way. I do seem to suffer from stitch a lot. I have had some success in controlling stitch by trying to breath from my diaphragm, but have never quite cracked the technique. Maybe this method may prove useful in my continued battle against that particular part of the 'Dark Side'.


Also today, I tried a touch of barefoot running for the first time. I've seen this mentioned a lot lately and John's well written article finally convinced me to give it a go.

I'm lucky enough to have my own beach. Well actually I have to share it with several thousand other locals, and many thousands more of what we like to call 'grockles'. Fortunately, they don't tend to all turn up at once, and this morning I only had to share my particular bit with 4 others. I found what looked like the perfect bit of hard sand to run on. I took off my shoes and in glorious sunshine ran along the wet sand next to a crystal sea.

Ouch!

Unfortunately, even the sandiest smoothest bit has rather too many sharp stones mixed in. I managed about 200m before I gave up. I then had to try to get all the sand off my feet, to avoid sandpapering the skin off inside my shoes and socks, for the run back home. It took ages to get my feet clear of sand. Eventually I got my shoes back on comfortably and it was back to the park for plan B.

I did a lap of the cricket pitch. This seemed enough for now. Fortunately dog owners seem to respect the park in the summer, well most of them anyway. I managed to avoid the only pile I could see. In the winter the state of the grass is appalling. How can dog owners let their dogs foul a park, where children play, and not clean up? My fear of running in the park is that my feet will end up in the same mess my shoes usually get in. Fortunately things seem somewhat better in the summer.

I could certainly feel that my feet had had a workout. Wearing rigid orthotics, my feet are probably worse than most in not getting their muscles working properly. I'll try to introduce more barefoot sessions and see how they go. I might try a pair of Nike Free to make barefoot sessions more practical, although I realise they have a heel and cushioning and so aren't really true barefoot shoes.

It is quite liberating running barefoot on cool grass! Running as it was meant to be. I just wish we had more days of the sunshine I enjoyed this morning.


Tomorrow I have the aforementioned 5 mile race, which I'm going to race flat out. I think I'm going to see a PB by a large margin, as it's 18 months since I last raced 5 miles. I'm leaving off my GPS, and though I'm wearing my heart rate monitor to record splits, I'm going to try to ignore it, or put tape over the read out. It's a bit of an experiment to see how well I can judge my pace. I hope I don't get it horribly wrong!