Less than 60 days to go to the first Half Ironman and some things are going really rather well. This weekend, I started trying nose breathing for my longer runs. There are all sorts of views on nose breathing, and there's naff all proper studies on it but I'm going with the general idea that seems to work for people with asthma who have been known to get better use of the more limited breathing (lung capacity, throughput, whatever it is) they can have by working with tools like Power Breathers. Whether it results in "stronger" lungs, better use of the oxygen that does get through, I don't really care why it works only that it might do.
Today was my second go with nose breathing. The rough theory is that there is an aerobic threshold above which nose breathing is not possible and that level is below the lactate and functional threshold, so you can guarantee that you are in that golden Zone 1 where the endurance benefits really come. The fantastic piece for me was that I ran 14km in an hour and 25 minutes whilst nose breathing only. Including a first km at 07:01 due to twatting about with my GPS and some fun traffic. That's an average pace of 05:57 per km, a whole 45s per km faster than my old Zone 1 runs. And it felt -easy-. I'm going to carry on with nose breathing for the long weekend runs, longish midweek runs and T2 bricks. Basically anything low intensity.
This weekend is the Wimbleball familiarisation day. Sunday sees a splosh in the lake, a spin around a lap of the bike course and a bit of a trot around a lap of the run course. It'll be cold as all hell in the water for sure, but I'm looking forward to finding out what these 53 hills in 56 miles are really about. I've ridden Hell, it can't be all that bad!
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