Set Your Own Theme Music

Today on my 13 mile run I ran with Peter Sagal and Ira Glass. If you listen to public radio you may be impressed right now. If you don’t listen to public radio you are probably wondering who these guys are. Or perhaps you couldn’t care less. Well Peter Sagal is the host of “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me“, and Ira Glass hosts “This American Life”. These are both popular national radio programs on public radio (at least as popular as public radio shows can get). And, of course, they didn’t actually run with me, I was listening to podcasts of their shows as I ran.  Although I do know that Peter Sagal is a runner because he has written some good articles for Runner’s World magazine.
I’ve decided that on my long runs instead of just hitting “shuffle” in the ipod, I’m making playlists with a theme. Today was NPR (National Public Radio) podcast day. Many weeks I would mix a podcast of one of these shows with music for the run but it was nice today to have talking for most of the run. If you haven’t heard these programs check them out on your public broadcasting station or download their podcast.

Last week was my long run theme was “new music”. It was a playlist of tunes my son, Scott, had downloaded for my for father’s day. There were a few artists I had heard of like The Lumineers and Bruno Mars, but there were also names I didn’t recognize like Daft Punk and Florida Georgia Line among others. That was a good run because almost every song was new to me. Fortunately Scott has a good sense of the music I like (which is actually almost anything).

So, don’t just listen to a random mix of tunes, put a little thought into it and plan your theme music for the long runs.