Have you ever had “that song” pop up on your player when running and then you feel like you can go forever?  “That Song” is what I call a power song.  You may have noticed that at the end of my running posts I add a list of power songs for the run.  Those are the songs that I felt my absolute best during that particular run.  Recently, my boss let me raid his music collection and I was able to add almost 60 new songs to my player.  Last night I ran 5 miles and my entire run was a power song   It was absolutely fantastic. 

Music has been proven to elevate mood and brain functioning and it has also been proven that it boosts performance during exercise.  The catch is that it can also alter pace when combined with long distance running.  Ever gone out too fast at the beginning of your run and either cramp up or wear yourself out too early?  Music can be the culprit for that one.  In order to use music to assist your run instead of escaping it, you will need to decide what beats per minute (bpm) pace works out best for you.  This is the tempo of your music and the number of footfalls per minute.  I looked and http://jogtunes.com is a pretty decent site to help design playlists based on bpm pace.  In no particular order here are some of my power songs from last night along with their bpm.

Power Songs:

My beats per minute average out at about 120, which actually surprised me. This seems a little slow but I think in this case, my music boosted my mood which boosted my pace and helped me finish my 5 miles in around 47 minutes. 

Anywho, I completed my run last night with a big grin on my face and that Sweet Dreams song is still stuck in my head 8)

Happy Running!