I'm my own experiment

It seems like Sunday's Wokingham Half Marathon is going to be some sort of experiment for me. I have been an avid supporter of running with music since I started this whole running thing a few years ago. I've even written a post about the positioning and motivation about where I put particular tracks to help me during the run.

I was reminded of this last night when I saw a Facebook post from eatingtrees explaining that he was currently compiling his playlist for the Wokingham Half but then went into a mild state of panic that I don't have one this time. At all. This will be the first half marathon I've ever run without some musical stimulus helping me get through those last few painful miles. There's a reason for it though, and that reason is Portuguese.

Last year's Lisbon Half Marathon was a horrible, horrible run. Everything that could feel bad, did. I finished over 13 minutes slower than my predicted time and my slowest ever by 7 minutes. It completely knocked my confidence and it completely and utterly destroyed my faith in music getting my through the bad times. I have not run with music since.

In a nutshell, my playlist was designed to be turned on at a certain point in a race and then by knowing the order of the tracks, I knew exactly where I should be on the course at any given time and then finish with 4 really happy and upbeat (read cheesy) songs that got me through that last stretch without any problems. This playlist worked time and time again with me hitting my predicted finish times in numerous events and then Lisbon happened...

For whatever reason, I started falling behind my pace and couldn't get it back. In fact it just kept getting worse and worse. Then the worst thing happened. The first song came back on. The song hat usually comes on with 50/55mins running left. Remaining motivation. DEAD! I tried to ignore it and then had to turn it off. Then I skipped back to my last 4 happy songs to push me through but knowing it was the second time I'd listened just felt like cheating. Then they finished again and I was back to the start. The iPod came off and the last half mile was completed with just my heavy breathing for company. By the way, I in no way blame the music for my poor performance, it had nothing to do with it but they will eternally be linked in my head.

Mind you, all my training runs have been tuneless and I've got up to 10 miles with those so it will be fine. I'm sure... Either way, I'm looking forward to this run, it's gonna be great!

Music makes the legs go one in front of the other

I've mentioned my playlist (not the quickie Sony W one but my actual training and race one) before but it was only while explaining it to someone the other day (and being called a bit of a geek at the time) that they mentioned I should do a full post explaining why and how it works for me. The actual choice of songs doesn't matter at this moment as there won't be a single person who would look at my playlist and say 'Wow! the boy's a genius, I will listen to only that and nothing else whenever I run from this point forward' so please stick with me. It's more about the placing and type of songs you use so this is just a post explaining a couple of my choices and how I did it.

The way it works is having a set distance to run to. Mine happens to be based on 6 miles and is pretty much 52:30 long exactly! So if I'm doing a 10k, it's almost perfect, if I'm doing an 8 miler I'll turn it on at 2 miles and so on and so forth. This means I don't have the constant music and therefore it doesn't become background music. It means when it starts, I know exactly where I am in the run, the distance to go and also, how long I have to get my arse home! See, I race the music home everytime. Mind you, racing it home is one thing, beating it home is a completely different matter. I think we're about level on results at the moment!!

The Starting Point
So, I had the total time. Now to find the tracks. I did a full search through my iTunes and also ended up buying a few bits of cheese from Amazon's MP3 store and gave myself a starting point. Strangely, this was at the 26:15 mark or 3 miles-to-go mark as I like to think of it! The reason for this was that I really wanted a big mental **HALF WAY THERE** in my ears and didn't want to think 'oh the halfway point is somewhere in the middle of this track'. This means I can check my pace in relation to where I am and in addition, the song was one of the big motivational clichés out there. Eminem: Lose yourself (minus the first 32 seconds of nothing obviously). Now this song has never been a favourite but was specifically purchased to become my motivational kick up the arse and dag nammit it works!!

The First Half
I then set about building 26:15 minutes of music up to that point. The idea of this first half of the playlist was about the beats, keeping the pace up but making sure I didn't revert to listening to music that I didn't like. Basically, that being what I class as 'dance' music! A couple of tracks that will be mentioned among others that won't be for potential embarrassment reasons are the starting track of Foo Fighters: Monkey Wrench and somewhere in the middle of this half is Arcade Fire: Keep the Car Running. Simple theory... music I like with a beat I could run to.

The Beginning of the End
After my Eminem motivational kick up the backside, I have a few tracks that keep not only the shouty motivation up but the beat and pace up too. The theory being that I'm getting knackered and just the beats aren't going to help as much on their own at this point but the shouty stuff does. Think teen pop!!! I'm saying no more than that. I have little street cred as it is, naming the actual tunes would just be hideous. Think of them as guilty pleasures.

The End
Now the beats matter even less. I've tried running to a set beat at the end of a run and for me, it doesn't work... at all! Now it's all about the motivation part. Making me smile as I head to the finish line. If I'm happy and have a rather embarrassing and stupid grin on my face then I'll be running a damn sight better than if I have boom, boom, boom going on in the background. So this is the point you need to find a couple of tracks that you can listen to and know you're having more fun than anyone else around you! Based on this, my penultimate track is Bellamy Brothers: Let your Love Flow and then the one that I'm always chasing home is Jackie Wilson: Higher and Higher. So much fun and I promise you it works!!

One last thing I must mention is once you've found these tracks, try not to listen to them day to day. Take them off your other music players and iTunes and your mind will start to automatically go into running mode when you hear them. All my tracks now have an immediate effect and when I'm having a slow day and I get to that 6 miles-to-go mark, it acts as a massive pick me up and gets me to the end every single time.

Oops! I don't wanna do that again

It appears I made a number of mistakes during my first ever HM last year. I completed it and in a time I was pleased with but I have since found out that I could have done better not only in time but in how I felt too. So here are my mistakes and how I've fixed them:

Having random music playing instead of a set playlist. This is a bit geeky. OK, very geeky but I didn't like the random music coming on. It didn't mean anything to me while I was running. Therefore I devised a set playlist that I would use for the last 6.1miles (52:26sec) of any run I did. This meant I raced something home. I started with a song which starts at the halfway point (i.e 3 miles) and then worked forward from that and back from that to get the full 6 miles. It means I know what plays when and how long I've got to go. Plus it's upbeat so it pushes me on. I really can't tell you how much this has helped my when training on my own.

Drinking only water on both training runs and the actual HM. This stinks of the obvious but this was bloody stupid! I mean really, really, bloody stupid. Running for 2 hours uses a lot of energy. I didn't replace it with anything but water. No sugar, no salts, no carbs. Genius. Sometimes I'm amazed I finished at all and wasn't one of the unfortunate ones eating pavement. This time I'm training with Lucozade Gels and drinking Powerbar Milkshakes after and I feel so much better for it. Both during and after the run. Why did I discover this so late!! Idiot!

Starting too fast and finishing too slow. After my revelation last week, this is not a mistake I intend to make again. Negative Splits!?!?! is something we should all be doing apparently and all I have to do is let lots of people run past me at the beginning and then pass them towards the end. Surely even I can do this!! I have to let the competitive part of me go for the first half of the race before turning on my playlist and start reeling them all back again in the second half. I see this as a little challenge now!

So, mentally I'm doing better than last time, physically I'm doing better than last time and at the moment, I don't just want Fleet to be over with and then stop. I want to carry on and do more organised runs and try and improve every time. Maybe this is what it feels like to be a proper runner...

As a final note, I really want give my full support to my running buddy, eatingtrees. He's only now coming back from suffering with his ITB and he is not where he would have liked to have been in training coming up to Fleet. He's starting to put the miles in again now but is pretty down hearted about his times. Considering we thought he may not be able to run Fleet at all, I think he's done fantastically and it'll all help towards our ultimate goal of the Prague HM which is a couple of weeks after Fleet. If you want to know how he's getting on with his injury, check out his blog and give him some encouragement, I reckon he'd appreciate the support!