What’s The Frequency, Kenneth?

What’s the what? Huh? Hey, who’s that Kenneth guy anyway?

So, there is indeed a story about “Kenneth” and the frequency he’s looking for, but I digress.

The reason for this post is an obvious one, and yet one most people don’t give much thought to as how it actually affects our running. The fact is, most of us run with music reverberating through our ear-buds that the person running next to you could hear, if their iPod wasn’t cranked up so high too!

See, music is written and recorded in BPM (beats per minute). Those BPM actually affect our pace either in a good way, or a bad way. See, to get the ideal benefit from listening to music when we run, we need to be listening to music at approximately 5 BPM over our target heart rate and pace. Now, having said that, it has also been documented that any music that is listened to over 145 BPM while running (or performing any other exercise) is actually detrimental to our workout. Now you can see the difference between listening to Nelly or James Blunt on a run. Fact is, your body will adjust to the BPM, and affect your heart rate and pace. And remember—we race at the pace we train.

Now, your next question is: Who is this Nelly character?! (just kidding—I assume most of us know who he is) But more like: “How do I know the BPM of the songs on my playlist?” Well, there are a couple of ways to figure that out.

1. I personally use a Metronome application on my computer to figure it out. It’s free, and I am happy to give you the link if you want…..and own a MAC.
2. You can listen to the song, and count the number of times for the kick drum in a 30 second period, and double it. This will give you a very, very close BPM without any equipment.

When training for a race, and working on distance and pace, it’s a good time to take stock of our music, and make sure it’s helping us get to where we want to be.