Running in Soft Sand

There’s nothing quite like soft sand to give your legs (and lungs) that extra special burn. You can run on road, on gravel, even on the flat beach- but hitting that ankle-deep, soft, powdery, golden sand will make you question your running ability. Since it’s pretty hard to do, you need to make it fun if you want to last the set; here’s how.

Find yourself a sand dune. Doesn’t have to be very big, although the bigger the better. The basic aim here is to run up and down the sand dune (just keep running, running, running) for about as long as you need. 30 minutes ought to be enough for most people. In running up and down, up and down, you can follow a very structured hill repeat session such as:

Charge up, recovery down; hit the bottom and charge up again. Do 10 of these, take a breather and repeat.

Or you can take a more game-oriented approach:
Play “tag”, “red-rover” or other similar childhood playground games on the dune. Bigger kids still love playing them too. The advantage to games is they give you as much more of a workout when everyone’s “in it”. Time flies and when it gets dark, you’ll start hearing “ok, one more”. So much for 30 minutes

From a technical aspect, you don’t need to remind anyone to “lift their knees” or “power” the shoulders or “drive” their hips in a game environment. There’s nothing quite like being chased to bring out natural power, form and willingness to drive out the sand.

p.s. don’t wear shoes