Her First Nasal-Only Half Marathon: From a 6K limit to 21K, nose only — Angelica's story.
How Bogotá runner and OA Advanced Instructor Angelica Hernandez trained for eight months to run her first half marathon breathing only through her nose.
"I understood, more than ever, that it was my breathing that got oxygen to my muscles so they could do their job."
Sport was always the compass
Angelica grew up around competition and training, but in 2006 motherhood changed her routine and sport slipped into the background. It stayed there until 2020, when the pandemic gave her an unexpected opening: a chance to return to sport with a completely different mindset, paying closer attention to her body and learning from people who understood it better than she did.
Learning to run, one gasp at a time
She started running in 2021. Six kilometres was the ceiling — not because of pace, but because that was as far as she could go without stopping. Side stitches, breathlessness, and having to walk it off were just part of running, as far as she knew. Over the next four years, running with a mix of nose and mouth breathing, she built up to a maximum distance of 10 kilometres.
A method, and a target
In July 2025, Angelica came across Oxygen Advantage. The more she looked into it, the more she recognised room to improve — enough to set herself a target that had nothing to do with pace and everything to do with breath: run 21 kilometres using only nasal breathing. From November 2025, she trained specifically toward it.
Bogotá, July 2026
At the Bogotá Half Marathon in July 2026, Angelica ran the full 21 kilometres breathing 100% through her nose. No cramping. No sense of suffocating. Her heart rate stayed controlled for the entire route. Fatigue only arrived at kilometre 19 — and the next day, rather than feeling wrecked, she felt strong.
For Angelica, that race was the clearest proof yet of what nasal breathing changes in performance and recovery — not a theory anymore, but something she felt in her own body, kilometre after kilometre.
"I ran 21K breathing 100% through my nose — no cramps, no suffocating feeling, heart rate controlled the whole way."— Angelica Hernandez