Running to the right beat helps to ease the pain
Something about the rhythm of running spurs the rhythm of music in your head during lonely moments on your feet.
Or at least it does for me. Even when I’m trying not to think about anything, if I’m running on my own (and don’t have earphones on), a song will inevitably pop into my brain.
And unfortunately for me, I have a very average taste in music.
My co-host on the Dirt Church
Radio podcast, Matt Rayment, is a music aficionado, played bass in The Sneaks (once called the most exciting new band in New Zealand), and always knows the perfect tunes for any occasion.
He’s the go-to guy if you want a cool suggestion for on-point music.
Many’s the time on runs in remote places I’ve wished there was some way I could have Matt telepathically tell me what song I need.
Because sometimes you really, really need a song.
I once read American mountain runner Anton Krupicka saying that by the time you get three-quarters of the way through an ultra marathon you’d better have figured out why you’re there, and the song stuck in your brain had better be a good one.
He’s totally right on both counts. Motivation is incredibly important when you get to a point in a run (and it doesn’t have to be an ultra marathon) when you start to wonder what the hell you’re doing.
And the song? Well, put it this way, I’ve had some decidedly average songs stuck on loop in my brain during races and, sheesh, it sucks.
Once it was Katy Perry Roar – for that I can blame two
Motivation is important when you get to a point in a run when you start to wonder what the hell you’re doing.
Australians who were singing it ironically at the startline as we stood around in the dark waiting before a day-long race through a forest.
Now, I’ve got nothing against Perry, and I’m probably not her target audience, I’m guessing. But come the middle of the afternoon, as fatigue had well and truly set in, I was less than impressed that, yep, stuck on repeat in my head was I got the eye of the tiger, a fighter, dancing through the fire.
’Cause I am a champion, and you’re gonna hear me roar…
Oh, lordy… I’m sure the longhaired, admirably-bearded Krupicka was warning about exactly this.
And I can only hope that Matt isn’t reading this – the shame, the shame!
Another time I got stuck with Annie Lennox singing Little Bird – no idea where that came from either. It’s better than Roar, but when you’ve heard it over and over again while you’re struggling up a part of a course called ‘‘The Loop of Despair’’ (yes, it’s as soul-crushing as it sounds) you’d be over it, too.
I was happier another time with Turn the Page (the Metallica cover, rather than the Bob Seger original, in case you’re wondering).
Something about its brooding, just-get-it-done lyrics spurred me on( Every ounce of energy, you try to give away. As the sweat pours out your body, like the music that you play).
On the podcast this week, we interviewed Andrew McDowall, a New Zealand representative ultra runner who also happens to be a sound engineer and professional musician, writing scores and playing in bands like Katchafire.
We asked him what motivated him in his darkest moments.
His go-to trick was ‘‘you paid for this so you might as well enjoy it’’ – basically the Scrooge tactic.
Other times he gets a boost thinking about his kids and wife, and the thought of them cheering him on.
But another mind tool was visualising the finish line and imagining finishing.
It might seem strange to be thinking about finishing to keep you going but, hey, you take your motivation where you can.
Maybe there’s a song about that.