Wtf? no food; side stitch on run

Ok, so I’m doing a Brick today and I get off the bike after about 50 minutes and start my run. Everything is going great, Im holding a sub 6/mi pace and then at around .75 miles BOOM, huge side stitch(I dont mean ache, I mean STITCH). I tried to run through it, but had to stop actually for a brief while and then could resume running at a slower pace and then eventually I returned to sub 7/mi. pace, but only for a little while.

This happened in a tri last summer and both occasions I didn’t eat anything immediately before. Today I ate at least 3 hours in advance of this workout. What the hell is this from? I’ve read a few different theories, but I cant find anything that seems 100% legit. The only thing I can think of is that both times I started the run pretty fast, but that still doesn’t make sense to me.

How do I prevent this in the future? Is it just repetition?

were you running downhill at all?

AP

I dont know if you’re being sarcastic, but no it was flat.

That post was surely not sarcastic. I also tend to get a side stitch during a downhill section of my runs, I think because it is difficult to maintain a consistent and smooth stride. I have never correlated a side stitch to eating too soon prior to a run. I think preventing a side stitch stems from keeping a smooth stride in time with your breathing. Which for you I am sure is normally not a problem considering your ability to keep such a brisk pace. Not sure this was helpful but just giving my experiences.

Try avoid any “shallow” breathing. You want to be taking deep relaxed breaths. Side stitches are usually caused by spasms in the diaphragm, so you also do not want your breaths in be in sync with your running stride. It been my experience, that when a side stitch occurs, just relax and make full exhalations of your breath.

Interesting, Ive the read about spasms causing side stitches before. I would say I noticed towards the end of my run that longer, deeper breaths seemed to be less painful.

However, the past 2 weeks I did a different type of brick consisting of 4 x 20 min bikes followed by 1200m runs. I was hitting the 1200’s is under 4:30 with no side pain whatsoever, but perhaps that was because I didn’t run long enough to get the side pain? I got the pain right at 1200m today.

If its any consolation, perhaps not downhill, but I live in the city so I am constantly going up and down side walks. Not sure if this would contribute to side pain at all.

So what exactly causes side stitches? Is it for sure inconsistent breathing patterns? or is it something else?

As indicated above, stitches are caused by diaphram issues. They can be exacerbated by many things, including too much undigested food in the belly. Assuming one avoids things that can increase the likelyhood of their onset or continuance, they will go away with improved fitness. In the meantime, try to stretch the area by various means - belly breathing, turning one’s torso side to side, gentle massage, etc.

Side-stitch can be caused by transferred pain from your diaphragm and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with how recently you ate. Best advice that works for me is just try to make sure you are taking full, deep breaths.

Some people say try to exhale when your left foot lands. I don’t know about that - might work for you.

sestivers was correct - I was not being sarcastic at all. I get frequent side stitches when running downhill unless i actually lean into the hill. I found that I have a tendency to lean back, and when I do that, whammo, a side stitch, and those mothers can hurt!

I have never had a side stitch due to food in the gullet - it’s either a downhill or lack of belly breathing… but that’s for me. FWIW I sympathize…

AP

From what I’ve read, and that is far from the most recent (ie a couple of years ago now) and not the complete edition of whatever might be out there but:

Stitch in it’s various forms is essentially weak abdominals. For a while the abs can deal with the stresses involved (ie,holding your guts in place) but after a while they fatigue (different for different people of course) and this is in effect, the muscles starting to tear. This often happens with fat bastards like me with arguably no (well one actually) abs or with full bellies. The effect of the mass of ones internal organs (including food and drink) bouncing around eventually tires the abs and the stitch begins. This is why drinking water in large amounts rather than sipping regularly can bring on a stitch.

In your case, you may have had weakened abs from a previous workout, or been running hard with more bounce or any other combination of factors that lead to the stitch. Hard to say exactly, but from what I know (and have experienced, that seems to confirm what I’ve read) the above is true.

As we are all different of course, your mileage may vary…

That sounds somewhat reasonable, but I’ve found in my case that I get stitches at the beginning of a stand alone or triathlon run, and they tend to go away the longer I run and the more warmed up I am. I have no real idea what causes them, but I think that too much greasy food/ sugar in the gut, stress, and shallow breathing, especaily breathing in causes them for me. Once I get them, they are hard to get rid of.

I used to get stitches a lot. I paid attention to what seemed to predicate them.

Now I have cut those things out and haven’t had to resort to “core” work yet :slight_smile:

What some of the other replies said:

I used to suffer horribly from stitches - I was a pure (although barely average) runner and 50% of my runs and races would be seriously compromised by the problem. The immediate fix was to spend 6 months doing 100 situps a day. THere are many theories out there about stitches and you don’t need to take this as more than one guy’s experience but I have never had the problem again since going through that and now just do 15 minutes of core 3 times a week for maintenance.