The songs below will surely add a little Christmas boogie to your runs. I dare ya, add these up-beat holiday tunes (some even a bit kwirky) to your running play list and see if you don't end up with a little extra holiday pizazz in your stride. Go ahead give it a try!
1. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)—U2 2. Christmas All Over Again—Tom Petty 3. Christmas Blues—Blues Traveler 4. Father Christmas—The Kinks 5. Christmas This Year—Toby Mac & Leigh Nash 6. Rocking Around the Christmas Tree—Darlene Love 7. Run Rudolph Run—Sheryl Crow 8. I Smell Winter—The Housemartins 9. Deck the Halls—Trans-Siberian Orchestra 10. Oi to the World—No Doubt 11. What Christmas Means to Me—Paul Young 12. Christmas Is The Time To Say I Love You—SR17
Back in March, I reviewed a product that I just love called yurbuds™. I have small ears and it's been difficult finding earbuds that stay in place. Problem solved with yurbuds™! They fit, stay in place, don’t irritate my ears, and they work. yurbuds™ are custom-sized earbud enhancers (produced by yurtopia LLC) that increase comfort, don't fall out, and enhance sound quality. They fit right over your existing earbuds or you can purchase yurtopia’s version of earbuds called yurphones™ that come equipped with the custom yurbuds™.
The great people at yurbuds™ have graciously sponsored the Next RunnerDude's Blog contest! They're providing a pair of yurphones™ that will be fitted with the custom-fitted yurbuds™ for each of 5 winners! That's amazing! To learn more about yurbuds™ and the parent company yurtopia LLC, be sure to check out their website.
How To Enter:
To enter for a chance to win one of the 5 pairs of yurphones™ /yurbuds™, simply email RunnerDude at runnerdudeblog@yahoo.com by midnight Thursday, April 29. Be sure to put "yurbuds" in the subject line and put your first/last name in the body of the email. Each email will be assigned a number in the order that it's received. The True Random Number Generator will be used to select the luck winner which will be announced on Friday, April 30th.
Congratulations to Gene Soboleski, the winner of RunnerDudes's AudioFuel/London Marathon Song Nomination Drawing! For the past several day dozens, the blog's readers have been sending in nominations for their favorite running songs. The song nominations were then forwarded on to MusicandMotivation.com, the joint venture between AudioFuel and the London Marathon. The emails RunnerDude received were numbered (in the ordered received) and yesterday those numbers were entered in The Random Number Generator which picked Gene Soboleski's email as the lucky winner. Gene will receive £20 worth of products from AudioFuel. Go Gene!
Once AudioFuel collects all the submitted songs from around the world, they will take the top 10 songs and publish an iMix as the official playlist for The London Marathon. So, check their website next month to see if your nominated song made the Mix! [Click here] to get a free sample from AudioFuel!
Listed below are the songs nominated by the RunnerDude's Blog readers.
RunnerDude was recently contacted by the Virgin London Marathon and a running music company called AudioFuel to see if the readers of RunnerDude's Blog would like to help them out with a little project. My response? "You Bet!"
In the lead up to this year’s marathon, they’re asking runners to nominate their favorite running tracks of which the most popular will end up being the “soundtrack” of the London Marathon!
Organizers know that filling your iPod with good running music is what a lot of runners like to do and they’d love if you could nominate your favourites, too. Ideally they'd like to generate some debate and get nominations from a wide cross section of the running community as possible.
AudioFuel has provided a great incentive to the readers of RunnerDude's Blog—£20 worth of AudioFuel products! Here's how it works. Nominate your favorite running song(s) by emailing the name of the song(s) to RunnerDude at runnerdudeblog@yahoo.com by Monday, January 25th. Be sure to put "Song Nomination" in the subject line and the song name and your name in the body of the email.
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RunnerDude will forward your nomination(s) on to AudioFuel and your email will be entered in a RunnerDude Drawing. The lucky winner of the drawing (announced on Tuesday, February 26th) will be able to select £20 worth of AudioFuel products! Yep, remember this is the London Marathon, so were talking pounds not dollars. How cool is that! (There are lots of compilations and playlists to choose from ranging between £5 and £12.) A special thanks to AudioFuel for providing such an awesome prize!
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AudioFuel will publish the top ten nominations they receive from around the world as an iMix on February 1st.
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Some of the nominated songs so far include...Don't Stop me Now: Queen, Sweet Disposition: The Temper Trap, Granite: Pendulum, Sugar Low: Aynsley Lister, Born to Run: Springsteen, Turn the Beat around: Gloria Estefan, Pump It: Black-eyed Peas, Insomnia: Faithless, Jessica: Allman Brothers Band, Run To The Hills: Iron Maiden, Heroes: David Bowie, Girl: BeckOn Time: The Disco Biscuits, Engineering Masterpiece: Lady Southpaw, Emily Kane: Art Brut, Call on Me: Eric Pridz, and No Easy Way Out: Survivor.
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Don't wait! Send your favorite song to RunnerDude today! Good Luck in the Drawing!
Want to be a more efficient runner? Increasing your stride might be the answer. Most top elite runners have a stride rate around 180 strides per minute. Checking your stride is really simple. Start running and once you're up to your regular pace on a regular run, time yourself for 1 minute while you count each stride. Don't worry if your stride is below 180. That's where most mortal runners will find themselves. To improve your stride rate, try focusing on your stride periodically during a regular weekly run. Get some arm action going too. If you pump your arms a little faster, your feet tend to follow suit.
Another way to help increase your stride is to listen to music while you run that has a beat that mimics something around 180 beats per minute. Don't have time to count the beats of all the songs on your playlist? You're in luck! Erin Sholl (a Battle Creek, Michigan transplant in Brooklyn, New York) is working on her independent songwriting project: Lady Southpaw. Her mission is using vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, computer beats, keyboard synthesizers, harmonica, accordion, and even a baglama to design songs for running. So far she's written six new songs based on research about music and the brain, getting in "the zone," and developing a consistent optimal running stride rate.
Erin ran her first marathon last fall through Team in Training and now she has her sights set on the 2010 NYC Marathon. While fundraising for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society she was inspired to write a song about the experience and give it to her donors as a thank you gift. At one time Erin was a certified personal trainer so she has a fundamental understanding of running biomechanics and training programs but she's mainly coming from the perspective of a "nerdy artist." She likes experimenting with sounds and bringing together big ideas like the ultimate music listening experience with the ultimate running experience and finding the zone where they meet. So, she did some extra research and took some time to write the songs. Erin's been documenting her progress about what she has so far on her blog—Running Rocks. She's hoping it's only the beginning. You can find out more about Erin and Lady Southpaw on her website.
Most of the running songs Erin's created are written at tempo of 180 bpm but the first one is written at 160 to help you work up to that speed. She says that if you count the number of times your left foot strikes in one minute it should be between 80 and 90 times. Multiply that by 2 and you'll have your 160 or 180 beats per minute. Erin's stresses that you should work on short quick steps to reduce the impact on your joints, helping to prevent injury. Erin wants to add more songs to the six she's written. She knows you need a lot more songs than six to train for a marathon, but she wants to make sure she's on the right track and make sure that her future songs are something that runners want to hear.
If you'd like to try a free song in return for giving Erin some feedback, write to Erin at ladysouthpawmusic@gmail.com. The Songs for Running will be released for sale later this summer. Right now you can get the Lady Southpaw self titled E.P. (which is not written for running) from most online music retailers including iTunes, eMusic and Amazon.
Check out the clip below of Lady Southpaw in action playing for runners in the HOHA Classic 5K race in Hoboken, NJ.
I guess I'm old school, because it took a long time before I started to listen to music while running. Still don't listen to music too often while on the open road, trail, or greenway, but I have found that listening to music while on the treadmill helps pass the time. Music's also good on a really long run if I'm running it alone and don't have my running buddies to shoot the breeze with. If you enjoy listening to music on the run, here's a list of songs you might want to check out. What are some tunes you'd recommend?
Back in March, I reviewed a product that I just love called yurbuds™. I have small ears and it's been difficult finding earbuds that stay in place. Problem solved with yurbuds™! They fit, stay in place, don’t irritate my ears, and they work. yurbuds™ are custom-sized earbud enhancers (produced by yurtopia LLC) that increase comfort, don't fall out, and enhance sound quality. They fit right over your existing earbuds or you can purchase yurtopia’s version of earbuds called yurphones™ that come equipped with the custom yurbuds™. 
Congratulations to Gene Soboleski, the winner of RunnerDudes's AudioFuel/London Marathon Song Nomination Drawing! For the past several day dozens, the blog's readers have been sending in nominations for their favorite running songs. The song nominations were then forwarded on to MusicandMotivation.com, the joint venture between AudioFuel and the London Marathon. The emails RunnerDude received were numbered (in the ordered received) and yesterday those numbers were entered in The Random Number Generator which picked Gene Soboleski's email as the lucky winner. Gene will receive £20 worth of products from AudioFuel. Go Gene!
RunnerDude was recently contacted by the Virgin London Marathon and a running music company called AudioFuel to see if the readers of RunnerDude's Blog would like to help them out with a little project. My response? "You Bet!"
Want to be a more efficient runner? Increasing your stride might be the answer. Most top elite runners have a stride rate around 180 strides per minute. Checking your stride is really simple. Start running and once you're up to your regular pace on a regular run, time yourself for 1 minute while you count each stride. Don't worry if your stride is below 180. That's where most mortal runners will find themselves. To improve your stride rate, try focusing on your stride periodically during a regular weekly run. Get some arm action going too. If you pump your arms a little faster, your feet tend to follow suit.
r stride is to listen to music while you run that has a beat that mimics something around 180 beats per minute. Don't have time to count the beats of all the songs on your playlist? You're in luck! Erin Sholl (a Battle Creek, Michigan transplant in Brooklyn, New York) is working on her independent songwriting project: Lady Southpaw. Her mission is using vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, computer beats, keyboard synthesizers, harmonica, accordion, and even a baglama to design songs for running. So far she's written six new songs based on research about music and the brain, getting in "the zone," and developing a consistent optimal running stride rate.
I guess I'm old school, because it took a long time before I started to listen to music while running. Still don't listen to music too often while on the open road, trail, or greenway, but I have found that listening to music while on the treadmill helps pass the time. Music's also good on a really long run if I'm running it alone and don't have my running buddies to shoot the breeze with. If you enjoy listening to music on the run, here's a list of songs you might want to check out. What are some tunes you'd recommend?
