I have recently started running again after quite a while. I used to race cross country in high school, but never liked running much and dropped it when I entered college (with the exception of once or twice a year). I am still reasonably fit and have decided to start running again. However I now remember one of the reasons I never liked running — the abdominal cramps. After about 10 or 15 minutes at a reasonable pace I find that I get these cramps in my lower abdomen. If I drop to a walk they usually disappear, but sometimes come back again.
How do I stop these from happening? I seem to recall that someone once mentioned to me something about breathing. Is it that or something else?
If they’re stitches, I usually get rid of them by forcing a few entire lungs of air out. What I mean is, I push all of the air out on the exhale, in turn really contracting my diaphram, and that usually gets rid of them.
I also avoid having any recent food in my stomach, or drinking a glass of water on an empty stomach before I go. All that sloshing around gives me stitches as well.
I learned that I can eliminate this problem by not running within 2 hours of eating. Actually, 2 hours gets me to about a 90% confidence level, and 3 hours gets me to about 99%. Hope that helps.
I can run fairly immediately after eating, but not drinking. Also, you may just be running too hard for your current fitness level. Whenever I get a cramp or stitch, I try slowing down a bit, but not walking unless it’s totally unbearable at any pace.
Just to add some detail, as far as anyone can tell stitches come from the constant jarring of running stretching the tendons and mesentries that hold the abdominal organs in place. The most common stitch is felt just under the ribcage and is caused by the liver bouncing, but for novices stitches often occur throughout the abdomen and result form the intestines themselves swinging around.
As your body becomes more accustomed to runing the tendons will strengthen, the mesentries shorten, the abdominals stengthen and the problem will cease. You can accelarate that by doing a few crunches and leg raises to strengthen your abdominals to keep things more tightly packed.
To get more immediate relief you can try shoving you fingetips into your abdomen below the pain and puching upwards. That should push the ofending organ back into its normal position and reduce the pain.
Interesting. I was told that the best way to avoid getting a stitch is to run at a pace that allows you to breath only through your nose, as opposed to gasping big mouthfuls of air.
There’s probably something to that as well. A slower pace will be gentler. In additon by thinking about your breathing (something most novices neglect) you will be breathing in synch with your pace. That means the diaprhagm will be rising on the downstep and rising on the upstep which in turn keeps the abdominal contents packed more tightly, as well as making your pace more efficent.
That makes sense, but what if you are thirsty? Everyone in the gym where I go carries a water bottle, and I definitely get thirsty on the cardio machines.
Wow, this isn’t at all what I expected to be the cause. I always pictured it to be like an air bubble or something. So it’s actually my innards getting twisted around? That sounds serious. And you recommend that I manually adjust my liver? :eek:
Just drink a little bit. You want enough to moisten your mouth and throat, but you don’t want to gulp down half your bottle of Gatorade.
In a six mile run, I drink about a cup of water, or maybe 10 oz (unless it’s hotter than Hades outside). During half-marathons, I see a lot of the experienced runners swallow just a little, then swish around the rest and spit it out.
I don’t get stitches much. Instead, around the 10 to 15 minute mark, I always think I need to pee. I just keep running and that feeling goes away.