Running on the Beach

I went to Myrtle Beach this past weekend. Had a nice time with the family – sunbathing, shopping, and riding banana bikes. And of course, as with all vacations, I ate too much. UGH!

I went running twice on the beach. The first was a long run of an hour and 30 minutes. I simply ran down the beach for 45 minutes, and turned around and came back. I tried to keep my heart rate in zones 1 and 2, and tried feeling the gravity of the pose method. But, every time I leaned forward and placed my feet down farther back, I would run faster for sure, but my heart rate would rise into zone 3. I just can’t feel relaxed running this way. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that you just can’t run “slow and easy” with the pose method, so I just relaxed and enjoyed the rest of my beach run.

The next day, I wanted to run on the beach again; however, I had a nasty blister on my big toe. I poked it with a safety pin to drain the fluid (I know, gross) and then slathered some neosporin and a few bandaids on it. I set out for a 40 minute tempo run. My plan was to warm up for 20 minutes, run for 20 minutes at threshold (zone 4-5a) and then cool down easy. During the tempo set, I inserted some short bursts of doing the pose drill, then tried to maintain that falling forward feeling afterwards. While I had some success at this, I was not able to reproduce that magic moment I had on the treadmill last week, where I really felt gravity working for me and it felt right. Running fast still feels hard.