Sunday 29 January 2012

Thoughts after running this weekend!

Over the last few years of running I have tried various ways of trying to distract myself from thinking of the miles while im running and just wondered if anyone else had encountered this?

What do I mean?! Well, when I first started running I used to use my ipod with a random collection of songs on so I could sing my way through my run. I found though that I knew most of the songs on my ipod and so knew when the end of the song was and how many minutes I would have been running by the time the song finished. I decided to ditch this and rely on my watch with a countdown of 10 minutes which would be roughly a mile of running. Then with my phone, I found an app which clocked the route I was running, the time etc etc etc and had a voice shouting out when I got to each mile (which could be changed to a different distance). I found in recent weeks though that the phone was getting heavy so I have invested in a gps watch which I have found to be very good. Not only is it light, it is giving me decent stats on my run which I'm finding a great help!

While running events and taking part in parkrun, I have seen people with a gps watch, headphones or neither. What do people find works for them?



In my parkrun at Brueton this weekend, (picture above) I finished in 82nd place in 27:28, it was my 15th parkrun and I enjoyed running with Rus who finished 1 place and 1 second ahead of me! (Jenni who was volunteering on registration thought that it might have helped if we had concentrated more on running than chatting as we went round the 1st lap!) I really enjoyed the sprint finish over the last 200m! We also had with us Peter who usually runs at Brockwell parkrun who finished 4th overall in training for his London Marathon in April

4 comments:

  1. I listen to music through an iPod. The beat keeps me going and the miles get eaten up. Mainly club music, rock and a few show tunes. Anything that works!

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  2. I think I have only ever listened to music once when running and although I enjoyed the music, the earphones really annoyed me.

    I have borrowed a GPS watch a couple of times and find them very good for even paved running to hit a target time. But my normal method of a plain and simple stopwatch is normally good enough for my. Particularly on the Coventry parkrun course that I know so well!

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  3. To quote from my editorial in the Centurion Runners Newsletter
    "One final thing on a more serious note it would be advisable not to wear any form of home entertainment when training or
    racing as you become a danger to yourself, fellow runners and more importantly the general public!!"

    Louis Satterthwaite Centurion Newsletter Editor

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  4. A good point. And probably even more so the closer you are to your limit. Thanks for that Louis.

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