My friend thinks when running into a headwind you get less oxygen.

You are all wrong. With a few exceptions, wind is largely caused by air either rising or falling in the atmosphere. Falling air usually comes about when a cold front comes through. The colder air contracts and sinks in the atmosphere. This causes wind. Likewise, warm air rises and expands in the atmosphere. This also causes wind. In the case of cold air, the air you breath in the wind is air that has fallen from in excess of 8-10,000 feet in the atmosphere. This air has a much lower oxygen content than the air at sea level. When air expands due to heat, the air can hold more moisture. In that case, the water molecules displace the oxygen in the air. Thus, breathing is the most difficult when the wind is either very cold or very hot and humid.

Can you explain how we process the air intake during our 5K when the runners in front of us are constantly breaking wind?

Precious Roy wrote:

You are all wrong. Running into a headwind is harder on breathing because the wind pushes the CO2 back into your lungs each time you try to exhale. Your body sends O2 to the blood stream when you exhale. The wind inhibits your ability to exhale and, as such, inhibits your ability to get the 02 into your blood stream. This is the primary reason cyclists, skiers, etc. drop their head down when going into the wind. They do not want to exhale into the wind.

Cyclists keep their heads down because this way it is easier to whiff each other's farts. This gives them extra energy.

This is a brilliant post! If only it had come at the beginning of the thread.

Trolls, pay attention. This is masterful work.

all joking aside, have any of you tried to breathe while holding your head outside of a car traveling over 50mph?

It's very very difficult, so yes, you get less oxygen.

You can adopt a kind of bobbing motion for your head. You inhale with the head up, which acts as a 'ram air' intake. You exhale with head down. If you watch pigeons walking, you'll notice that they do this. They have evolved it for the sake of efficiency. Try it, it works.

little known secrets wrote:

Cyclists keep their heads down because this way it is easier to whiff each other's farts. This gives them extra energy.

Ah-HA! This is incorrect! I caught you, and I have shown my intellectual superiority by pointing out the fallacies that you write!

I just don't get why there's wind during the winter? Look around you, there's no leaves on the trees, and if there are no leaves, then they can't move. Without moving leaves there is no wind.

So why is it windy in the winter?

malmo wrote:

I just don't get why there's wind during the winter? Look around you, there's no leaves on the trees, and if there are no leaves, then they can't move. Without moving leaves there is no wind.

So why is it windy in the winter?

It's not the leaves, malmo. After all, something must make them move to start with. It is the butterflies moving their wings that is the genesis of much wind. There are no butterflies around in the winter, you say? Well there are, but they are in far away places, like Mexico. That's why the winds in the winter are so strong. Those little butterfly wings beating in Mexico create small breezes which grow exponentially as they travel over distance. By the time they reach you, they are a full blown gale.

I don't think it's less Oxygen so much as less air. It seems to me that the wind creates a bernoulli effect which lowers the air pressure making it harder to inhale.

Surely some of the wind gets blown into your mouth making it easier to inhale, but harder to exhale and the two cancel each other out.

We breathe harder running into the wind because it's hard work.

If you run in place in a Faraday box in the stillest of conditions, you will suffocate, in contrast to running outside in the wind. Therefore, clearly it is the wind that produces a more oxygen rich environment.

If there was no wind on Planet Earth, would the oxygen rise or fall in the atmosphere?

'It's the same principle as water - the surface tension is much greater upstream vs downstream. It's the primary reason it is so hard to swim against a river's current vs floating downstream.'

Moron of Ventolinesque proportions

physics & Bernouli wrote:

J.O. wrote:

You get more oxygen running into a headwind because you are breathing air at a greater pressure tha with a tail wind.

But that's just a guess.

This is the primary reason treadmill running is easier... because it doesn't f*ck up the oxygen content and air pressure.

The *primary* reason that dreadmill running is easier is that you don't have air resistance to overcome.

DocLove wrote:

'It's the same principle as water - the surface tension is much greater upstream vs downstream. It's the primary reason it is so hard to swim against a river's current vs floating downstream.'

Moron of Ventolinesque proportions

Turn on your sarcasm detector.

DocLove wrote:

Moron of Ventolinesque proportions

Flagpole, is that you?

hire me fire me wrote:

all joking aside, have any of you tried to breathe while holding your head outside of a car traveling over 50mph?

It's very very difficult, so yes, you get less oxygen.

This is, in fact, the reason why skydivers use parachutes - if you freefall for too long you will suffocate.

Soksi wrote:

This is, in fact, the reason why skydivers use parachutes - if you freefall for too long you will suffocate.

No, we skydivers cannot get in air through our mouth in freefall but we are going so fast that the air is forced in through our pores and we breathe through our skin.