How to Run on Sand

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is David Brown, and today we're going to talk about how to run in sand. Now, running in sand is very different than running on almost any other surface. Perhaps maybe mud is similar. But the fact is it's very, very soft, and it's very unpredictable, and these two things make running on sand both much harder physically on your body, but also much more dangerous. So, there's a few simple tips to running on sand. First of all, define the kind of sand that you're running on. Whether it's hard packed sand, which is typically the sand that's located closer to the surf, or soft packed sand, which is the loose, fine, granulated sand that you find further away from the surf, further up the beach. Now, running on these two surfaces doesn't change a whole lot, except that running on soft sand, you really need to be prepared to run a little differently. And what I mean by that is as you're running, you want to try to look and prepare a line. You want to see how the sand undulates, and how the sand looks, and you want to prepare yourself and prepare your foot strike in that sand for that situation. At this point, you probably want to lean forward a little bit more into your run, and drive your toes into that softer sand. By doing that, you're going to create a more stable platform for your foot, and an easier way for your body to push off. Now, running on hard pack is very similar to running on any kind of, any other kind of hard surface, but you are still going to get a little bit of a absorption with your, with your foot strike. So same thing; lean forward a little bit more, maybe try to drive that toe a little bit more on that foot strike, and you'll notice that it won't be as difficult as just running up upright with a heel strike."