What music can do!

I went out yesterday on my long weekly run, a nice 18k run around the local Mercer Country Park. I normally don’t use my Ipod during my training sessions but once in while I put on some music during my long runs. I feel that it tends to distract my from the fact that I have 15-25k ahead of me.

At the start of the run, I didn’t really feel the love. I felt old, had stiff legs and the normal hip and groin pain, so I concentrated on the music instead. I was lucky that the first couple of tracks were some of my favorite on my playlist: DJ Tiesto’s “Parade of the Athletes” from the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. If you ever need to buy an album for running, this is it!

The next couple of km’s went ok. The legs felt a little better but the rest of the body wasn’t really going for it. The head felt heavy and my lungs didn’t feel to good either.

At 6k the miracle happened. It wasn’t the course, not the weather that delivered the change. No it was the music! A live edition of Queen’s “The show must go on” (Though not big fan of Elton John) followed by Infernal and directly into some David Guetta and then I was flying. I was so engulfed int he music that I suddenly noticed that my hands were flying all over the place doing keyboard solos and drum beats . I wonder how that must have looked to the other people in the park…

From there the rest of the run was a peace of cake and the pace just went up and up to a point that I had to deliberately had to slow down in order to keep the heart-rate below my planned level.