The great thing about sharing your thoughts is that people tend to share right back. Building on the focus on your foot-falls and on your breathing, here is a couple of further tips, this time from the Bok himself, Nick!
For running, the focus of our energy should be in our legs, whilst the upper body should be relaxed as in skiing or Tai Chi. To help achieve this, focus on relaxing your arms, your shoulders and most importantly, your jaw.
Once you are relaxed it is easier to tense in a positive way, particularly by stretching your fingers forward and using your arms like the connectors on the side of a steam train. This will propel you forward in a most amazing way when you need that extra punch of speed.
Yesterday morning was beautiful and despite initially cold hands, it was a lovely run. People who don’t run, or at least don’t run in the morning, are really missing out on some magnificent views! We followed a route out past Wivelsfield Church and then got lost to the north of Wivelsfield Green, circumnavigating a wet field before going back the way we had come! It’s reassuring that I don’t just get lost on my own, although Nick wanted to go the other way first time around!
Once we hit the village we got lost again, trying to find a path that wasn’t there (the ‘this could be a path that’s here so that this guy can keep his hedge trimmed’ turned out to be just that!) and backtracking, although looking on the map afterwards it was clear that we didn’t go quite far enough… to the other side of the house with the nice hedge!
We came back through Hundred Acre wood (as I think of it) and back across the common in the warm sun.
The pace was generally quite fast, although the errors meant that this is not reflected in the time. There were also several faster sprints which again left me feeling ill by the time we got back! We ran about 7.75 miles (possibly a little more with the switchbacks) and came back in 1 hour 17… a mere 6.2mph.
Nick’s GPS would have been excellent to give us a better feel for what we had really done, but I feel duty bound to report that it won’t hold a charge!
That’s a bit like me when I’m racing Nick!