Bondi Barefoot 10km soft sand run

This was my first foray at soft sand running. I'd run on the beach before, but near the shoreline where the sand is harder. This was a proper soft sand Achilles killer as the organisers billed it. To make things harder for myself I ran a half-marathon yesterday too as i wanted to mimic as much as possible (at this stage), things as they would be out in the desert, but minus about 20 degrees of heat!

So after a very casual 1hr 50min half marathon yesterday, I must admit the thought of doing 10km on soft sand wasn't very appealing, and doubled by the fact that I'd never really done anything like this before, but hey what the heck, you have to have a go!

The first couple of kms were pretty tough actually, but once you get into a rhythm, it was actually OK. Also if you get in the footsteps of someone else, it makes it much easier :)

So into my rhythm, I was taking it pretty easy and felt very comfortable clocking in at around 5min 50 sec kms. The goal was to come in around an hour as I thought 6min kms was reasonable given you re running on soft sand. Then at around 7.5kms I pushed on, and found someone else to stay behind. However as I pushed for the finish I made a massive balls up, and thought I'd finished, but in fact had another 300 metres to go. So muggins here had stopped, and lost himself around 30secs before i realised, and then ran the final 300 metres to the finish in dead on 59 mins. So all in all, quite happy. The winner came in an unbelievable 42 mins, which is quite simply phenomenal, I can just about do that on the road!!!

I also learnt a lot about where possible hotspots are too on my feet. I did do it barefoot and because of the movement on the sand as you run, I got two smallish blisters on both feet on the toes next to the big toe. So something to note when I do the real thing next year with over-sized trainers. However a great race to do on a beautiful Sunday morning on Bondi Beach. There's also a half marathon on soft sand on Manly Beach in a few weeks, so think I'll do that too, but tape my feet up this time!

Pretty pleased though as I wanted to see how I would feel doing this on the back of doing a 21km run... and it felt pretty OK to be honest. I'd also recommend to my cyber buddies that you get yourself down to some soft sand and do some running on it. I learnt a lot from doing it, and will incorporate into my training much more regularly from now on.