Weekend in Malaysia: sand running benefits and technique

This weekend we visited Sibu Island, Malaysia for some diving and time reading books on the beach. 

With just one week to go until the half marathon, the beach also became my new training ground. 

In theory it takes about 3hrs45 to get to Sibu Island from Singapore. However, in Friday evening traffic and the ridiculous queues at the border, this crept up significantly. We'd hoped to arrive at the resort - Sea Gypsy - at 10pm, but it was actually 11.30 by the time we got there. 

Sea Gypsy is a great little place, and definitely one I'd recommend to families or groups (if you're looking for a Romantic trip away for two, try nearby Batu Batu. More expansive but apparently it's the bomb).

Sea Gypsy is really well priced - we paid $860 (Sing dollars) for 2, including accommodation, 2 dives each, travel and all our meals. They were really good about making sure there was enough veggie food for me and gluten free for Simon. 

Accommodation is basic but really nice. We stayed in a lovely little beach hut. From our veranda we could look out over the ocean through the palms. 

The only criticism would be that it's a bit too English. There wasn't much of a local feel going on and not much local knowledge expressed. I think that showed in the quality of dive sites we were taken to.  

The diving was pretty dull and I have to say, given that there are some amazing dive locations not far, I can only assume that a local dive master would have managed to find us better places to head to. 

The running. 

The beach is just over 600m long which is pretty good. I had visions of having to do lots of little sprints, but it was easy enough to work through to 6km without getting too bored. With crabs darting about and gorgeous scenery, plodding up and down the same stretch of beach was actually quite pleasant. The only downside was running past people drinking cocktails on the beach 10 times... there's nothing like viewing other people's sundowners to feel like a total bore. 

Running on the sand is a great workout though. It builds muscles below the knees, and it good for your arches and tendons. Apparently you also burn 1.6 x more calories over equal distances. 

Make sure you warm up on the wet sand though (see right) before moving up the beach. Soft sand running is hard work so you need to be ready for it. 

It's also really important to try to run on the most even bit of sand you can find or you end up putting a lot of extra strain on whichever is your down hill leg. Running laps gets around this a bit as you even out the over worked leg but the flatter the better.  

Although I didn't explore the rest of the Island, I wouldn't be surprised if there were so good tails. I just didn't really fancy getting lost on a tropical island and attacked by the jungle life on my own.  Given that on Friday I managed to electrocute myself whilst packing and on Saturday I got stung my a jelly fish, I was worried what bad luck might await me... it always comes in threes after all.