Electro popping or rocking?
I've always done the majority of my training runs to music. The only time I abandon it is club running. Music provides me with a bit of a lift when my pace is flagging, and keeps my mind off what hurts. However, it's not something I use to drive my runs, and I've typically stuck to rock as my staple.
However, today I tried a little experiment. When I first started to run almost 8 years ago, I'd just got an ipod, and it was almost empty (I think there was even a few times when I ran with a minidisc player...), anyway, I was desperate for music to run to, I downloaded a podcast called "podrunner". I think I used it two or three times and by then I'd got round to loading my CD collection onto the ipod and podrunner was no more.
However, running to music that you have an emotional connection to gives you a buzz, until you get something you don't feel connected to, and that can really impact your pace. So I thought I'd give podrunner another try today.
Interestingly it was a selection of tracks which built up in bpm, from 140 to 180 bpm over 50 minutes. I didn't try and run hard or differently to normal and just paced myself to what felt natural.
So today I ran 11.2k in 51.44. Last week on Wednesday's ever so slightly longer run, I covered 10k in 49:35, this week I covered the same distance in... 45:13. That's a hell of an acceleration, in fact that's about a 10% improvement.
Also, my pace did gradually increase throughout the run from 5 minute kilometers to 4.19 per kilometer at the end. Perhaps there's something to this consistent bpm music and running. Going to continue to experiment with one run per week on pod runner and see how we go.
My pb for 10k is 42.45, so I need to maintain faster than my fastest kilometer for ten k to improve. That's doable right?
