On the beach

Sunday again, wow another week has just flown buy and has another year as I add another year milestone onto my age.
Sunday finds me at the beach with the small group of runners that has adopted me :-)
We did the 4km from jetty to jetty and back.
The sand was a bit soft for my liking and so running with small strides is the only option even if I wanted to run with larger strides.

One thing I read in the Pose Method book which struck a chord with me was a bit about the psychology of running, what should be on your mind.
What is says is that you should keep your mind in the present moment by thinking about your movement, style, breathing etc.
Dont let it wander into the past or present to think about how tired you might be at the end of the race or any other tactics that you may want to employ as all this information can feed back to the present and modify your style to cause a self fulfilling prophecy and wreak your run.
This must be similar to say, tennis players who must only think of winning that one point that they are playing now, not what has happen prior to that or what may happen.
If you are down 6 games you still play like it is the first point in the first game, the same with running, don't worry about a bad start just concentrate on getting your movement correct now as that is all that exists.
I will practice more of this, but this time it was late nights and drinking a little too much beer that slowed me down.

On the Saturday I ran 4km along the beach and 2km along the pavement. I feel much lighter on my feet now, don't get the same scraping feeling on the surface, maybe as I am pulling my feet of the floor and using gravity more and not forcing myself forward using my feet.

In training on Thursday one trick I tried, from the book, was running with my hands clasped behind my back.
If you feel a difference between this and your normal 'pose' running then you are doing something wrong.

I missed out on my usual Friday run home as I went to the Fringe Festival opening parade through Adelaide's East End. After a few drinks and managing to miss my usual bus back at 11.45pm I had to get a bus that went in the approximate direction. I got off and had a 3km distance to get home. I had my flat Vivo Barefoot shoes on so set off running in a nice pace and I was amazed how easy it was to cover the distance after 5 pints of beer, not of course that I would recommend it, but just in case you are faced with that situation.

Neil