music to my ears

The latest edition of peak performance magazine dropped through my door the other day (or should i say i nicked it out of the prepping frame at work before my postman ben had tied it up) and i was intrigued to read an article about selection of music for different training sessions depending on what the aim of the session is. now i don't run with an ipod or an mp3 player because i don't know how to use them as i am a complete technophobe, and running on fast rural roads where you can't always see whats around the corner they can compromise your safety by disturbing your concentration. i do though often think about what songs i would like to be listening to on a run. for instance if i'm on a long run like i was today then i may have something rythymic like i'm on fire by bruce springsteen-that just the song that i've got on at the minute-or hayley westenra (for any fans of easy listening music i really recommend this young bird as being a new zealander she's not that well known in this country yet but she has a great voice). i would never choose some thing with a fast tempo for a longer jaunt because although that might help you in the later stages of the run, it also increases the likelyhood of going to fast in the earlier stages of the run, meaning severe pain later on in the session. for a faster paced session like a tempo run or even a run some thing with a really fast tempo. basically the essence of the article was that firstly listening to music does slightly improve performance, but you have to get the pace of the music to match the effort levels that you will be putting in to get the best results from listening to music.

13 miler today like i said, so i think that totals 53 miles this week, with a tempo run on thursday, this is the strongest i have felt for some time. i'm doing the towpath 10k on friday for portishead so that will give me a good indication of where i am with my training and more importantly how far i have progressed since clevedon about 5 weeks ago. i'm not doing any out and out speed work at the minute and in a way i feel like i'm reaping the benefits because i'm not beating my body about so much and am able to save my best for when it really counts