I’m fairly confident that I have now mastered the art of running without music. After my stresses pre the Marriotts Way 10k I am now trying to run without music fairly regularly, it helps to listen to my breathing and I concentrate on my pace more. But for long, slower runs, where there’s nothing to concentrate on, or, like I did last night properly for the first time, running on a treadmill it’s nice to have some distracting musical entertainment. If you’re using Zombies, Run! then you’ll also need it to break up the story line!
When I first made a running playlist I put a load of songs on it I liked. Some of them turned out to make running a misery as they were too fast, too slow or had varying beats that made my feet go all over the place. Gradually, with the help of a bit of searching and a manul BPM counter app on my iPhone, where you tap along to the music, I have created a running playlist of songs I actually like that are around the 160-180 BPM mark.
It’s not an exact science, they’re just songs with an easy running pace. The list works out at about 54 minutes, so when interspersed with Zombies, Run! comes to over an hour, meaning I can do an easy 10k to it for training.
I’ve included handy download links for Amazon and iTunes, in case there’s any you think should be on YOUR running playlist!
- Candyman – Christina Aguilera (Amazon, iTunes)
- Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous – Good Charlotte (Amazon, iTunes)
- Basket Case – Green Day (Amazon, iTunes)
- Paint it Black – The Rolling Stones (Amazon, iTunes)
- Lose Yourself – Eminem (Amazon, iTunes)
- Movin’ On – Good Charlotte (Amazon, iTunes)
- Time Warp – The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Amazon, iTunes)
- Having a Blast – Green Day (Amazon, iTunes)
- One Way or Another – Blondie (Amazon, iTunes)
- National Express – The Divine Comedy (Amazon, iTunes)
- Burnout – Green Day (Amazon, iTunes)
- Country House – Blur (Amazon, iTunes)
- Feel Good Inc – Gorrilaz (Amazon, iTunes)
- Chump – Green Day (Amazon, iTunes)
- Riot Girl – Good Charlotte (Amazon, iTunes)
- All the Small Things – Blink 182 (Amazon, iTunes)
You’ll notice a lot of Green Day in there. I imported Dookie from the CD I’ve had since I was a teenager into my iTunes library and it turns out mid 90s punk is excellent to run too, who knew?
My top two tunes on the list, the ones that made it to my Nike + power song status and can always be relied upon to perk me are Candyman by Christina Aguilera and Lose Yourself by Eminem. If you don’t add any other songs to a running playlist, I recommend adding those two, and if you don’t shuffle put them a few songs in so they’ll turn up just as you’re thinking “oh, my gawd, how long does this go on for!”
Do you run? Are there any must have songs on your running playlist?
