Music Free Zone

Today was never going to be a great run. The end of a long week, and a boring, slightly frustrating day at the end of the long week. Still, I got out there.

Today I tried an experiment, running to a spoken-word podcast instead of music. Tonight I ran to an episode of Pseudopod, the horror fiction podcast. Pseudopod is excellent — and I also highly recommend its sister SF podcast Escape Pod.

The episode that happened to be next in my queue tonight, though, didn’t end up appealing greatly to me, either for its story or for its reading, which was a shame, but I got through my run anyway.

Apparently there wasn’t any big effect on my time, though, as the RunKeeper log shows. I kept up a nice, steady pace, and got through 5km in 35 minutes.

I’m going to have to try this experiment again, maybe with Escape Pod — SF appeals to me more generally than horror does, so my chances of getting a story I like are slightly higher.

And at some point, I should try the scary option — going with nothing at all. No music, no words, just me and my feet and my breath. As someone who pretends toward Buddhist leanings, this should be a good opportunity for something similar to the practice of walking meditation. Which may be why it scares me; meditation can be such hard work…

Anyway. Sorry if this is a bit random and disjointed today. Like I said, long week. Hopefully I’ll be up nice and early on Sunday for a decent run in the morning after a nice day of rest, at which point I may be more coherent.