Her and her son turned, heading back, and continued running along the sand. As she ran, the lessons of the past skipped through her head. Tamar had meant so much to her, and even in the short time her sister-in-law had been in her life she'd passed a great deal on to Kavala. She'd always used to sing Kavala a mantra to keep her form good as she moved. "Top up, Heal up, Knee up... Oh Yea. Reach out claw back, run run run." It was the five basic parts to an upright creatures running action. Each one needed to be considered when one thought of running. A mantra was an instrument for thinking, a way to condition one's mind like one conditioned one's body. Mantras aided Kavala in all things in her life. The Drykas were big on them, and Kavala had adopted the practice herself though she was on the fringe of never really believing she was Drykas anymore... nor anything but a brood mare to the Akalak.
Kavala stretched her legs, continued her intense focused thinking, and passed several men running the opposite way. The Akalak were very health conscious and as the morning grew later, she often had to share the beach with several of them. After flushing a pair of rabbits out of saw grass along the surf, which darted perpendicular to her path to get away, Kavala smiled. The beach was starting to get busy. Gulls wheeled overhead, calling out to her, while tiny creatures in the sand leaped away to flee her passing.
Mantras.
They were a kind of secret weapon or magic. One just didn't need a powerful set of lungs or a strong body to be a good runner. One needed a strong sharp mind as well. And that mind had to have a 'can do' attitude when it came to enough discipline to run from point A to point B and keep up the pace. Kavala glanced over her head at Tasival, nodded to herself, and kept running, going back to thinking about her favorite mantras.
"Lighter, stronger, faster.." was her favorite. She tended to repeat it coupled with "Relaxing, Smoothly, Flowing.." It helped lengthen her stride, relax her body, and helped her to run with better technique. She often repeated the mantras every other footstrike once she was faltering and needing to stop. They helped her not to stop. The other thing that helped her was pretending her whole body was a magnet. Once she was past her halfway point and coming home, Kavala always visualized Sanctuary as a pull, dragging her effortlessly back. Coupled with the mantras, it almost always granted her extra energy for the return which tended to be smoother than the departure.
So along with the mantras, the visualizations, Kavala thought as she needed Sanctuary again about the common problems her running had. The first and foremost was heel stricking. This was when her heel struck the ground hard acting as a breaking action. It was a detriment and something that she always had to work on. It was when she struck the ground in front of her center of gravity giving herself an awkward stride. She always had to work on getting her weight back over this rather than using the 'claw back' momentum of her foot propelling herself forward. When she heel struck, she tended to land too heavily and stress all her bones, especially at the joints.
It tied back into the first mantra... what she needed to watch for when it came to her physical form.
Another problem for Kavala, one she had to carefully watch, was leaning backwards. A good runner leaned forwards slightly with their whole body rather than breaking at the waist or leaning backwards. If she leaned backwards, as she was prone to do, she would break up her entire action and then her back would hurt after the run.
Kavala also watched her arms. She often had lateral arms. Her arms were always supposed to swing the direction she was running, not across her body. Once she'd stopped carrying Tasi on her runs and actually used the baby pack, this had helped tremendously. Kavala had learned over time if there was excessive lateral movements in her body, it was twisting and then her joints would start to hurt badly. As her arms swung, there was also a difference between the height at the front and at the back of her arms. She brought her arms up to about chin height at the front so her arm was almost parallel to the ground at the back when she was sprinting. It felt high, but it was the reason she moved along so quickly, propelled by the energy of her arm action as well as by her legs. The angle of her lower to upper arm was always around ninety degrees (just less at the front and just more at the back). For longer distances the range her movement was slowed and less exaggerated with the emphasis being on relaxation and balance, as opposed to drive and speed.
Kavala was almost back to Sanctuary, but there were two more issues she had to deal with as she ran. She tried to 'stand up' more as she moved. When she sat as she ran, her hips were not held high enough and she couldn't extend her stride. So if she pretended her pelvis was attached to a puppet master's string and being lifted, her legs lengthened and her stride eased and her mantra's made more sense. When her pelvis wasn't uplifted it wass harder for her to to get significant knee lift and Kavla found herself running fairly flat footed, relying primarily on strength in her quadriceps and not using her hamstrings and calves to their full ability.
By now, sweat poored off her and as she reached the road upwards, leading to Sanctuary, Kavala had one more thing to think about. She corrected, gently, her pendulum legs. She wasn't lifting her feet far enough off the floor to get a good knee lift which shortened her stride length. With a shorter stride, the later part of the action of her leg was always relatively straight, and so she put more stress on her hamstrings. And when one did that, there was a danger to almost instantly getting hurt.
Kavala didn't want to be hurt. So she ran smoothly instead, crossing back around Sanctuary and into the stable yard, nearly colliding with Raiha as she spoke with Ragnor. The Konti unslung Tasi from his backpack, slid him to the ground, then bent double coughing as she tried to catch her breath.
