I would say that the reason you are having irregularities is because you are consciously trying to control your breathing. Just relax and run and ignore your breathing, it will come in naturally.

d3finition

I agree with d3finition. Trying to force your breathing into a pattern is the problem. Your body isn't getting enough air in and out with your controlled pattern and that's why it "takes over" and you need to take a deep breath and force it out every third or fourth breath. Ignore your breathing and you'll make out better.

That happens to me when I am not relaxed. Sometimes when the run gets difficult for me, my upper body tenses and I carry a lot of tension in the shoulder/neck area. That's when my breathing gets "out of sync" and I need to blow it out and reset. It happens less and less as I gain experience, although it happend yesterday on a doozy of a long run.

Shoulders loose, neck relaxed, see if that helps.

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An object at rest cannot be stopped!

quote:<HR>Originally posted by Ice Cream:

Also, if you are new to running, it may be that you run too quickly and therefore have trouble with breathing. <HR>

Yup. That's what it sounds like, coupled with of course, some perverted desire to control breathing.

The study that I saw was a while back in the Physician and Sports Medicine and I can't link it.

It is very common for elite and nonelite runners alike to automatically fall into a linked breathing and stride rate pattern. No one is denying that. It happened in the study I mentioned as well. However, they all ran worse when they thought about it and tried to fit their breathing into a predetermined pattern and ran better when they just let it happen naturally. I think that may be part of the confusion in some of the articles you linked. Yes, certainly elite athletes breathe and stride in a linked pattern. But somehow I really really doubt that any of the elite athletes running any distance think to themselves, "OK I'm just starting out, so now I'll have to breathe at a 2:2 rhythm, then part way through the race think to themselves, "OK, now it's time to switch to a 2:1 ratio. Their bodies automatically use and then switch to whatever rhythm works best at that time. Thinking about it rather than letting it happen naturally just slows you down.

Look at all the different patterns it's suggested that you try in your first article - 2:2, 3:3 , 4:4, 3:2 , 2:3 - and the suggestion to try them all? Ridiculous! A lot of those articles are written for newbies and the real problem is that they are just plain running too fast for their fitness level, not that they are running with a 2:2 stride rate to breathing that should be 3:2 or 4:4. Let your body determine what pattern it wants to use, and let it switch mid-race or workout the same way the elite athletes do, without your conscious interference trying to force it into one ratio, and you'll be a whole lot better off.

The main assumption I make is that your body knows when and how to breathe. Your breathing is controlled naturally by areas of the brain and is primarily triggered by signals from chemoreceptors in the carotid artery, aorta, and the medulla that sense the amount of CO2 in the blood that needs to be blown off. If you artificially try to force a cadence that you consciously decide to use, rather than not thinking about it and letting your body determine what is best, you are fighting a function your body does best by itself and that's breathing on its own. That's why jimg found he needed to take a deep breath every 3rd or 4th breath - his conscious effort at breathing conrtrol wasn't getting enough CO2 out, so his body took over. I'm not at all surprised he did much better and ran faster when he just relaxed and did not think about any breathing pattern.

The related problem with trying to force a particular breathing to cadence is that you will likely need to change the ratio to get more air in and out as a run increases in difficulty, as in elite athletes switching from 2:2 to 2:1 in that finishing sprint. Although it may take a few more runs to develop if you don't try to "teach" your body to breathe in cadence, your body will develop its own cadence all by itself and change the ratio automatically as a run or race progresses depending on need. Thinking about running and breathing cadence and trying to hold to a set patttern will delay or prevent the change and decrease your body's ability to quickly adjust automatically to its own changing needs. And make you slower.

Anyway, I think I've done this to death, and it's time to get to work, so keep on breathing however you can.