• Question: How can I stop getting out of breath when i run?

    Asked by meg53 to Helen, Jenni, Mark, Martin, Stu on 23 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Stuart Mourton

      Stuart Mourton answered on 21 Jun 2011:

      When your run, your body uses oxygen to produce energy to power the muscles. You need to try and regulate your breathing so that you can get into a rhythm where you are taking in enough air with each breath to maintain the balance between required oxygen and speed of running. Doing lots of long distance runs will increase the amount of muscle fibres used for aerobic fitness. This will help you run longer without getting too out of breath, but you will always have to increase your respiratory rate when running.

    • Photo: Helen O'Connor

      Helen O'Connor answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      When you start to run its important to build up your fitness gradually, so that your body – bones, muscles, joints, and your ability to pace and control your breathing – has time to adapt. A good way of doing this is by starting off running for a bit, then walking, then running – you can then extent the running time and shorten the walking time until you are able to completely run the entire distance (then you can start building up your distances).

      There are some good tips here if you want to build up gradually http://www.runnersforum.co.uk/beginners/4953-beginners-basic-guide-starting-out.html

    • Photo: Mark Burnley

      Mark Burnley answered on 23 Jun 2011:

      This is a difficult question to answer, because it depends what you mean by “out of breath”! There is no way to prevent you breathing harder during exercise, because if you didn’t breath then you would soon end up with acid, oxygen depleted blood, which is not good!

      Like helen and Stu said, increasing your fitness will reduce the breathing requirement during exercise, making you feel less out of breath. This happens because if you gradually increase your running pace, you’ll reach a point called the “lactate threshold” where your blood starts to accumulate lactate, and to “buffer” the hydrogen ions that appear as a result, bicarbonate ions react with the hydrogen ions and produce CO2. This CO2 drives your breathing and as a result if you exercise above your lactate threshold you will have to breathe a lot harder. Good thing is, endurance training increases the lactate threshold, and that is how you stop getting out of breath when running.

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