What’s on your running playlist ?

John Rankin asked on his blog “What’s on your running playlist ?” There have been some great responses from various people on what they listen to whilst running and some great music choices.

At the moment, most of my running is taking place in the evening in the dark, so headphones are not really an option as I need all of my senses to make sure I do not get run over (despite wearing a yellow safety jacket!).  However, weekend runs and treadmill sessions mean that my iPod is in use.

For fast runs or interval sessions, I usually listed to either Fat Boy Slim (You’ve Come A Long Way Baby) or the Arctic Monkeys (Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am Not).  For me, these two albums have the right mix of uplifting tempo but also allow me to slow down for the jog recoveries.  I can get away with only choosing between two albums (even though my iPod has a few more on there that I use when I am at work to help concentrate) as my intervals sessions or pace runs are rarely performed at a time that I can use headphones (as I mentioned, it is usually a dark, night-time run).

For my long runs, though, my iPod is always charged and synced with iTunes, because I love listening to Podcasts whilst I run in the daytime.  I have a long list that I alternate between, so in no particular order:

• Radio Five’s Fighting Talk (topical sports chat)
• James Richardson’s Football Weekly on Guardian Unlimited
• Manager Tools
• Newsnight
• Chris Moyles Radio 1 show
• Russel Brands Radio 2 show
• 43 Folders (personal productivity podcast)
• The Project Management Podcast

These are all spoken word podcasts (no music) and serve the purpose of taking my mind off the running.  Having said that, over the last few weeks I have realised that as I have become more focused on pace and less on HR zones, I am concentrating more on running and not taking in everything in the podcasts.   It still works though, as my mind needs to be occupied when it is not thinking about the run.

Sunday 8 miler

Schedule: 8 miles in approx 1 hr 22 mins (10m15s per mile)

Actual:  1hr 22 mins 10 secs(!). HR 138bpm

Pretty easy run, although the weather was deceptive.  Yesterday it was cloudy and windy with intermittent showers, yet I was hot on my run wearing long sleeves and shorts.  Today, it was sunny so I went for short sleeves (two layers – I wore the Oxfam vest that I received on Friday from the Oxfam marathon support team) and shorts and I was freezing by the time I got back. Still, it is unnaturally warm for January in the UK.

As with other runs recently, I was pleased that I was able to hit the pace dead-on.  In fact, I had to force myself to slow down after the first couple of miles as I was getting ahead of the pace I was aiming for.  I can see that I could run faster than the schedule dictates, but I am balancing the speed against that sudden jump in training that I am taking, so I am happy to make a couple of runs easier to allow for the additional, pacier runs that I am doing.

My wife was asking what I think about on the long runs and whether it is relaxing.  I explained that I love the long runs where I hit a rhythm and forget that I am running, particularly when I am listening to a good podcast.  In the hour and half I was out today this happened.  Passing the time on my iPod were the weekly Best of Chris Moyles, Fighting Talk and then Newsnight podcasts – on the Newsnight cast there was an interview with Oprah Winfrey about the amazing $40 million dollars she has given to set up a girls school in South Africa: I know Oprah is very rich, but this is still an extraordinarily generous gesture.  I hope this inspires other rich individuals to think long and hard about what they could achieve.

Mentally, I barely noticed that I was out for 82 minutes – my legs knew about it though!