Last week, I was sat watching the TV minding my own business when an advert came up through the TV and smacked me right in the face. Well, obviously not literally but I was surprised all the same.

The advert was for a cd box set of 5 cds that is purely songs to go running too. 101 of them to be precise.

Now, a lot of them clearly are not my taste in music but my biggest problem is how the b****y hell are you meant to run to The Fray’s ‘how to save a life‘? It’s hardly upbeat and positive and if anything, the line “I would have stayed up with you all night had I known how to save a life” catches me in the throat every time as we spent 2 days by my grandmother’s hospital bed watching her slowly slip away back in 2006. P!nk’s ‘Who Knew‘ still gets me with the line ‘If someone said three years from now, you’d be long gone, I’d stand up and punch them out, cos they’re all wrong. I know better, cos you said for ever.’ Anyway, I digress but my point was that songs like that are hardly running songs.

If I am running, I like to listen to very noisy rock or even metal music with the exact intention of drowning out my thoughts because sometimes they can be rather loud. ‘Meds‘ by Placebo has a bit that just sounds like noise and it clears any bad thoughts from my head so I love running to it.

Why should you run to music?

• Music can help lower your perception about the amount of effort you’re putting into your workout. It’s almost as if your mind and body separate, and if you’re into your music enough, you can ignore the niggling aches that would have bothered you when you weren’t listening to anything at all.
• Listening to music as you run can help you develop a more effective running technique i.e. how your foot hits the floor and the follow through (take notice of the beats per minute)
• If you match the tempo of the music to your pace, you can reduce the amount of oxygen you need by 6%! (source: www.runtothebeat.co.uk)

I don’t rate this CD very highly as I believe that you should create your own playlists that match your pace and ability perfectly. If you’re more of a placid jogger, running to house music isn’t going to help! Digital music players make creating your own playlists a doddle but if you really can’t live without this 5 cd boxset, you can get it from Amazon