Our Life Outside the Box

Matt and I have entirely different sleeping patterns.

I need a minimum of 8-10 hours of sleep each night (avoid me if I haven’t gotten the full 8, because I am crazy) and Matt is okay with getting around 5-7 hours of sleep/night and then doing a serious sleep catch-up session on the weekends. This means that on typical Saturday and Sunday mornings, I am up about 3 hours before Matt is. I’ve come to really cherish this “quiet” time. I usually clean up our apartment, rifle through random blogs, drink unhealthy amounts of coffee, and conquer those long runs in preparation for the half marathon/marathon.

Because I run alone (I hate nothing more than group projects, particularly while running) and because I’ve been attempting to train for this half marathon/marathon since April, I’ve really burned out my iPod music selections to the point where now I usually download This American Life podcasts and run with my BFF Ira Glass.

When we lived in SoBo, I used to run at night after work and really looked forward to winding down with some of the following artists:

• James Taylor/Carole King
• Bon Iver
• Fleet Foxes
• Cat Stevens
• Martin Sexton
• Jeff Buckley
• Sufjan Stevens
• Mason Jennings

… and my absolute favorite…

• Caleb Hawley (If you don’t know who Caleb Hawley is, then you should probably buy his most recent CD here and listen on repeat to my favorite song, #8)
  

  World's Most Talented Musician, Caleb Hawley.

The problem with these artists (not Caleb, he is perfect), is that my favorite songs of theirs have a tempo of 60 beats/minute, resulting in me running a 25 minute mile while half asleep. I started digging around to see if there was any correlation between tempo and exercise and came across this article in The New York Times entitled, “Phys Ed: Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?” In the article, Neurobiologist Nina Kraus states that, “Humans and songbirds are the only creatures that automatically feel the beat of a song…[causing] the human heart to synchronize to [the] music [and] the legs to swing metronomically, to a beat (Reynolds, 2010).” This means that, the faster the beat, the faster the heart rate, the faster the egg beater legs ensue.

Matt listens to nothing except the sound of his muscles ripping into Hulk-like masculine-ness, so I asked my .1% body fat, gym rat friend, Michelle, what she listens to when she goes to the gym. She told me she listens to:

• Notorious B.I.G.
• Justin Timberlake
• Tupac

aka all artists with songs clocking in at ~100+ beats/minute. According to the results of the study, Michelle seems to have the right idea.

So, in an effort to re-vamp my iPod, I open this up to you.  What do you listen to when you work out? What is your favorite jam to cycle, pump iron, run, and sweat bullets to?

References:

Reynolds, Gretchen. “Phys Ed: Does Music Make You Exercise Harder?” NY Times. Aug. 2010.

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