Are You a Nose Breather?

‍In the spring of 2026 I said enough is enough.

I had been dealing with recurring sinus issues for most of 2025 and decided this was not going to be my life. Not my future. I was going to get to the bottom of my sinus problems and end the debacle. My wife Kris was also pretty fed up. Between our French Bulldog Pacino and my snoring, she was ready to move into one of the adult kids’ abandoned bedrooms. Or more likely, make Pacino and me relocate.

So I decided to understand the sinus system, figure out what was going wrong, and fix it. I did my ChatGPT research and ordered two books. One that approached breathing and sinus relief holistically. Another that looked more like a med school textbook, thoroughly explaining sinus anatomy and functionality.

The books arrived Saturday morning.

I made an espresso, started a fire, settled into the red leather chair with my feet on the ottoman, Pacino curled up between me and the fireplace, and opened the first book: Breathe by James Nestor.

It was fascinating.

Nestor is a great writer — humble, funny, curious. I tore through the book, breaking only to stoke the fire or grab something to eat or drink. I stayed in that chair all day until I finished it. That night I did something that seemed absolutely insane for a guy who usually wakes up unable to breathe through his nose.

I taped my mouth shut before bed.

I told Kris that if I started acting weird in the middle of the night, I was probably dying of suffocation and rip the tape off immediately. Half confident Kris had my back, I listened to a meditation and tried to fall asleep.

I had the best night’s sleep of my life.

‍I woke up refreshed, alert, genuinely awake. And I am not a morning person, so this felt foreign. I could breathe through my nose freely and had none of the nasty morning congestion that had plagued me for decades.

It felt miraculous.

The next step was converting to nose breathing while exercising.

I remember as far back as grade school, gym teachers telling us to breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth while running. I always assumed that was one of those things adults said that nobody could actually do. Because for me, it was impossible. Still, for some reason that advice stuck with me for 45 years. Somewhere in the back of my mind I always wondered: do some people actually breathe through their nose while running?

I decided I was finally going to find out. I went for a jog, but mentally reframed it. I wasn’t really going for a run — I was going for a breathing exercise that happened to involve jogging.

It was brutal.

The harder I tried to breathe through my nose, the tighter my nostrils seemed to close. It made absolutely no sense. Why would the body reduce airflow precisely when it needed more oxygen? I kept my mouth shut the entire time while agonizingly making my way through the neighborhood at a blistering 13-minute-mile pace.

Those three miles felt like a half marathon.

At one point my neighbor Warren stopped me, clearly concerned by the look on my face. I explained the experiment. He suggested exhaling through my mouth and trying a nose strip next time.

A couple days later I tried again.

Nose strip in place, off I went. Still climbing hills like a turtle. Still mouth shut tight. But this time the verge-of-death feeling eased slightly. And my pace rocketed all the way to a 12-minute mile.

Progress.

Fresh off this tiny breakthrough, I started asking athletic friends whether they breathe through their nose or mouth while exercising.

Kevin Liberacki responded: nose. That got my attention because he had recently won a 48-hour bike race.

Joe Deighan answered the same way: nose. This is a guy who has won more triathlons than anyone I personally know and can still run a 10-mile race in under an hour at age 55.

Suddenly nose breathing at race pace no longer seemed ridiculous.

The third attempt was noticeably better. But the real breakthrough came after the fourth run.

I was still baffled as to why my nostrils seemed to close tighter the harder I tried to inhale. After one run I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and took a huge breath through my nose. Sure enough, my nostrils tightened and restricted airflow. I tried again. Same thing. Then I remembered something Kris had recently explained during a yoga session. She talked about deep breathing originating from the core.

So I tried something different.

Instead of focusing on breathing through my nose, I focused on pulling air from deep in my gut. And suddenly my nose opened. Air rushed in effortlessly.

It was shocking.

I realized I had misunderstood “deep breathing” my entire life. If I focused on where the breath originated rather than the opening it traveled through, my body behaved completely differently. To test it, I switched back and forth. When I focused on breathing through my nose, my nostrils tightened. When I focused on pulling breath from deep in my core, my nose opened and airflow poured in naturally.

I could hardly wait for the next run.

And the fifth attempt felt wonderful. For the first time, I could pull huge amounts of air through my nose while running. Halfway through I even removed the nose strip. Eventually I put it back on because this type of breathing is still very intentional for me. It is not yet automatic. But for the first time during a run, I never once felt desperate for oxygen or tempted to breathe through my mouth.

I am still focusing on breathing first and pace second. The pace will come later. I’m slowly and surely inching my pace down to call myself a “runner” vs a “jogger”. In the meantime, I am noticing improvements in my heart rate. And there is a different type of fatigue happening. On a long bike ride, my muscles fatigued, because they weren’t ready for the effort. But my body and breathing felt completely normal, as if I hadn’t done anything that day.

Yesterday I came across a video of Sha’Carri Richardson running anchor in the women’s 4x100 relay in Paris. Everyone online talks about how she is staring down the competition. But I noticed something else entirely.

At full sprint, moving at unimaginable speed, she is breathing through her nose. That fascinated me. Full race video here.

I share this story because I have become obsessed with this topic. And the more athletes I ask, the more I hear the same answer. Todd Scott — who has completed more 100+ mile ultra trail races than anyone I know — also breathes through his nose.

One of the things I love about endurance sports is that even after decades of riding, running, and training, you can still discover entirely new things about your body. Sometimes improvement does not come from training harder. Sometimes it comes from paying closer attention to form and function. That is part of what makes the endurance community so fun. People are constantly experimenting, learning, sharing ideas, and finding ways to become just a little better.

So that is my mission this summer. Whether I am on the bike or in my running shoes, I am focusing on breathing first and pace second.

And I am genuinely curious: Are you a nose breather or a mouth breather?‍ ‍