my own beat

3-mile marker reached! That's metaphorical, of course--I ran on the treadmill again. =)

I didn't just wuss out of actually running outside due to the increasingly chilly Boston evenings tonight, however--I had a very specific purpose for tonight's treadmill run. Let me explain. And keep in mind, I am a crazy person.

Whenever I run on the treadmill, I nearly always entertain myself by listening to music. And as I was "pre-training" a few weeks ago, I noticed two things:

1) When I listened to Lit's song "Pictures of You" while running my normal pace of 6.0 mph, I was taking every step almost exactly in rhythm with the beat of the song. The song was just a little faster.

2) When I listened to The Wallflowers' song "Everybody Out of the Water" at the same pace, I was again running nearly exactly to the beat of the song. This song was just a little slower.

Enter my UberNerdiness. Before I headed to the gym tonight, I downloaded a free program that calculates how many beats per minute are in any particular song. This program--with the unfortunate name of MixMeister BPM Analyzer--told me that "Everybody Out of the Water" is 82.42 BPM, and "Pictures of You" is 87.01 BPM.

So, nerd that I am, I headed out to the gym with a short playlist on my MP3 player made up entirely of songs between 82.5 and 87 BPM.

I now know that I run exactly at the pace of "You Learn," a 90's pop hit by Alanis Morissette. Huh.

More importantly, I can now run outside! With my brand new playlists of songs right around 84.13 BPM, I can pace myself by running instep with the beat of any such song.

Woo, nerds!!