What's on Your Playlist?

So, today I realized that I was a week behind in my training for Spartan Race (http://www.spartanrace.com/) and decided to enter my taper.  For the uninitiated, tapering is slowly reducing your workload before an event.  The intent is to have built your stamina and strength to their peak of performance and then reducing your workload so that you are fresh and ready for the event.  Start to soon and you may start to get out of shape.  Start to late and you risk leaving some of your best runs back in training.  My run taper started today and I felt pretty good.  It was actually kind of odd to run something less than 6 miles.  Almost like I was cheating, but that's not what today's topic is. 

No, today's topic is playlists.  I posted a joke on FB about how I use the music from the below video as my primary motivational music.  It was a joke at the time anyway, I actually downloaded the song after that and used it to start off my run and posted one of my strongest first miles.

Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/MriGFX?feature=watch

Anyway, I got into a short discussion with one of my FB friends about how you can't keep using the same songs over and over again, otherwise they lose their motivational properties.  I'm a firm believer in this.  The right song can get you up a tough hill, it can make you gut out a strong wind or it can make you push through that last mile.  However, if you toast your playlist, it loses its efficacy.  I have one friend whose playlist is so far gone that he won't even listen to music when he runs, he listens to books on tape (that has to be the most boring shit ever, but that's his cup of tea). 

A couple of weeks ago when I was out on a ten mile run I had just the right song come on and it actually motivated me to make my last mile the fastest mile on my run.  On the flip side of the coin, I had issues with MP3 player several months ago and my wife was kind enough to lend me her MP3 player.  I really appreciated the gesture and there are times where we even have similar tastes in music and I was kind of looking forward to seeing what she uses for her motivation.  Maybe I could steal a few of her tunes, but this is when I discovered that different people are motivated by different types of music.  When I was half way through that six mile run and Beyonce's "Girls Rule the World" came on, I had had enough of my wife's girl power playlist and turned the MP3 player off.

There's also the alternate school of thought, one that I actually find a lot of merit in as well.  The idea of training silently.  This is something I do on my night runs from time to time.  It's actually very comforting.  The dark, the quiet, the only sounds that you hear are those from your breathing, the natural sounds of the night and the rhythm of your feet hitting the pavement.  This also gives you an opportunity to work on your breathing and check out the rhythm of your cadence.  You can concentrate on your heartbeat and see if you are training at optimal level or if you need to kick it up.

Running silently is what a lot of elite marathon and distance runners do.  When was the last time you saw an Olympic runner or a marathon winner wearing their IPod at the finish line?  I know that there are even some marathons that will not accept a qualifying time if it was accomplished while wearing a music player. 

What's my point?  Nothing really.  Train how you want to train, use your music, but I would definitely recommend unplugging every now and again to see what it is that you are doing while you are out there hitting the pavement.  As always, train hard, have fun, be safe and, for today, think about what's on your playlist.