Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Running to the beat

So being unable to get to the park I returned to inner-city running, which of course is getting more and more tricky with construction season being in full swing. (Although a really nice guy sawing through concrete and creating one hell of a choking dust did stop so I could run through without my lungs seizing up - this is Saint John, people are polite). Managed to pull off another 6km with only a couple very short - 2 min - walking segments. Tried running to music this time although I'm sure my choices would not pass muster with serious runners. I ran to world beat, delta blues, folk, some Jack Johnson, not exactly pick-up-your-feet-run music, but it worked for me. I did read in the Globe and Mail running segment (http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/running/)
that there is a whole website dedicated to musical downloads for running/workouts http://www.podrunner.com - well actually, now I look more closely there are many websites with this aim. The music is chosen by the beats per minute to help you reach a certain magical 180 strides per minute. But the site I looked at had terrible music, the pounding, crashy, drum machine driven pop music kind that makes you think of sweaty workout rooms and over-excited aerobics instructors. Very un-Zen. I figure if I'm going to run I'll listen to music I enjoy and if that's some low, slow Delta blues then I can run to that. But there's other good stuff on the Globe page like a video on "Making Friends with Hills" (I'm gonna watch that one) and working up to a 10k run - I need that one too... But I'm sticking with my Delta Blues

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear that you did not get turned into a statue. As for the music there are some good arguments for using it to spur you on in the latter stages of a run. My current phase is going wireless, to be more "aware" as JC Van Dam famously repeats during his French language interviews.
    Where are you with the 100k before B-day counter?

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  2. Yes that was a close encounter with the concrete guy - he was unphased, he wasn't even wearing a mask! Yeah, I think I prefer wirelessness when I'm in the park for sure but if I could find some decent upbeat music (I probably could, I just haven't tried that hard) I could probably use it. It looks like there's only 25k to go to b-day! So I should make it....

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