It may be just under 4 kilometres in length but I'm beginning to love my sand runs.
With the tide in, I'm sentenced to a land adventure so instead of running on the flats with its much longer route option, and fording the occasional tidal pool up to 500 metres 'from shore', I run the shoreline and weave between the mangroves and dead tree trunks.
At my feet, soft dry sand, now-and-then shell beds that go crunch and a slant seaward.
It's a 'trail run' with vegetation and a lot of surprises that has to end at the tributary that feeds and drains the swamp from the Caboolture River.
Running on sand , soft sand, means you have to really work your ankles to drive yourself forward and so, soon enough, sand demands good form.
In fact, running on sand and up sandhills must be a superb training aide -- as Percy Cerutty so often insisted. On the flat, it is hard for the feet to secure an anchorage in soft sand so your traction is weak and the soles of your feet slip back as you work from your ankles to push yourself forward. So your upper body is pitched forward. With the same physics impacting on running up the sand on sandhills, the effect is further enhanced by the fact you have to lean into the climb against gravity. Running in water, on the other hand, really works the thighs as you have to lift your legs through the water and drive them forward through the knees. So running against resistance is the main game -- and makes for excitement and challenge...and better form. And sand while resisting is also very forgiving. A comfort sets in despite the maneuvering you have to do along the beach because your toes will sink into the surface.
And the dogs prefer to be land based because there is more sniffs to the metre.
(And I gotta think of the dogs).
Eagle
Fish
En route were the charms of a dead fish -- with a mean set of choppers (species unknown?) and the joy of being shadowed by the Sea Eagle that patrols the area.
If only this route was longer....but I can;t go into the swamp and if the tide is in, there is no great sand flat to be had 'out to sea'.
Nonetheless, there is much excitement to be had from running this route I have so often walked. Since my norm is to combine it with an 'out to sea' sand bank option I can still do the distances I'm after. But the charms of having all that stuff around you -- trees, grasses, dead wood -- is very different from the undulating patterns in the sand and cool pools away from the shoreline.
Destination
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