Hitting that perfect beat

Laid up with (what I hope is) a temporary gammy leg, I was faced with the choice of passing Sunday afternoon in front of the tv flicking between channels showing Eastenders (I know who killed Archie now so no need to watch Enders for another ten years), Holiday On The Buses (really STV, is this the best you can do in 2010?), or another repeat of Friends (very tempting seeing as its impending disappearance from C4 and E4 is looming…end of an era, sigh) but I decided instead to get on with my rainy day project: finishing off a playlist of music for running to.

Before my injury, I had managed to work my way up to 10k on the treadmill and I can honestly say that listening to inspiring music has played a big part in that. With my ipod on shuffle, Born To Run came on at just the right point during the final 5 minutes of last week's 10k and where I would normally have stopped as soon my nikeplus showed the distance I was aiming for, I kept running for another 0.1k (hey, every extra step counts when you've just run 10k :-)) just to spend every last second with Bruce.

Another much played favourite has been Hung Up, which I can always rely on to get me pumping after initial warm up, or see me through any rough patches, which is ironic really cos the last thing you want to hear on a treadmill is ‘Time goes by, so slowly’!

Any song with running in the title or lyrics is also a good bet for motivation, eg “I want to run, I want to hide” from Where The Streets Have No Name, “Let’s take a ride and run with the dogs tonight” Suburbia by Pet Shop Boys, or Keep On Running by the Spencer Davis Group. There are exceptions to the rule though, for instance this is one lazy girl doesn’t need to be hearing Kate Bush’s Running Up That Hill just yet - I’ll leave that to some day when I feel that death by hill running is the way to go.

Having downloaded the Now That’s What I Call Music series parts 1-13 recently, I spent a happy afternoon today reliving the 80s, without the perms, shoulder pads, or ra-ra skirts (unfortunately), and adding the most high energy songs I could find to my running playlist.

Movie songs spawned some faves (Holding Out For A Hero from Footloose, Maniac from Flashdance, and Eye of the Tiger, cos even us girls like to run along pretending we're Rocky Balboa sometimes); 80s pop, being cheesier than a multipack of Quavers, offered up the guilty pleasures of Walking On Sunshine, Take On Me, We Built This City; and Jimmy Sommerville and Paul Weller both hit the dizzy bpm heights with several songs set to get me lifting my legs that bit higher off the ground (Hit That Perfect Beat, Why, Don’t Leave Me This Way and Town Called Malice, Going Underground, Walls Come Tumbling Down, and Shout To The Top from Mr Happy himself).

Getting towards the latter part of the 80s, dance classics from acid house to the beginnings of hip hop left me spoilt for choice, so I'll work on a dance only playlist some other rainy day. But just listening to The Only Way Is Up while sitting at my laptop today had me with my hands in the air so I can’t wait to see what effect it will have when I’m battling with the last mile of a 10k, and who knows maybe even pass 10.1k next time...

I’ve babbled on enough but let me just leave you with a cautionary tale.

Listening to feel good music can also be bad for your health. The gammy leg that has forced me to rest while my friends are out racking up the miles this weekend can, I think, be traced back to a particularly energetic session on the treadmill earlier this week while listening to Footloose by Kenny Loggins. Let’s just say that experimenting with a new genre of exercise, a mixture of running and dancing, or what I like to call rancing, probably shouldn’t be carried out on a treadmill. If at all. But that’s the heady power of music for you!