The Golden List

After four years running I have finally compiled the perfect running song list. And now I am ready to share it with the world.

First let me give you some background. Almost from the very beginning of my running I have been running to some tunes. Soon I realized that certain songs wee much better than some others. Sometimes they add an extra skip to your step, sometimes they help you keep going when you thought you were done.

One of the best days of my running times was when USATF amended rule 144.3(f), allowing headsets for those not competing for a price and thus opening nearly every marathon to allow iPods on the course. I felt so strongly that the rule had to be amended that for the 2009 Twin Cities Marathon I made my own T-shirt which in the back read: "USATF 144.3(f) amended. Headphones allowed on the course. We won. Rock on!"

Slowly, I started compiling a list. I would listen to a sing on the radio, and feeling it might have the right stuff, I would add it to the list. Then on my next run, I would take it for a test drive and confirm my suspicion or removed it. This, however, didn't result in a very long list. Too many songs appeared good and ended up not working out.

Beats-per- minute (BPM) was for sure a main factor, but we are not hardwired to calculate those very well, and iTunes at the time (and still now) didn't calculate them. Them camebeaTunes, the great complement to everything iTunes doesn't do. For $31.95 you can download the full, rich-featured version that will scout your iTunes library and will (among many other things), remove duplicates, find typos on artist names, upload lyrics, populate Album Artist (usually from Artist), and best of all, calculate and populate BPM.

That entirely changed the game. using the newly calculated BPM, I created an auto playlist that contained songs from the genres I like (avoid Holiday, Classic, Jazz and other genres I like but rather not run to) within a specific beat range (I also doubles it, since a song at 160 BPM is just as good ti run to as one at 80, you just hit the pavement on every beat, instead of just on every other beat.

My library of nearly 15,000 songs resulted in more songs I could even fit in my iPod Shuffle. I used this in two ways. I run to the list, but also, when I found particularly good songs, I added them to my manually generated list. The reason I kept my manual list is that, important as BPM is, it is not the only factor in helping select a great running song.

With all the time you have running, I easily fell prey to my other passion (fault?): overanalyzing. Slowly I developed a list of what makes a good running song. Here are those factors:

• BPM (of course). Research has shown that athletes running at the beat of a tine improve endurance by 14%. The ideal pace (this is not as much a personal choice as you'd think, faster runners keep the same cadence, they simply have longer strides to cover more ground) is around 85 BPM.
• Obviously you need to like the song. The best BPM will do nothing if you hate the artist.
• Consistent beat. A guy on an acoustic guitar with no percussion usually makes for a bad running tune. Surprisingly, even great artists don't keep a perfect beat (Chris Smithers and Bob Dylan are great, but tough to run to).
• The best songs start with a really obvious beat. Since not all good songs are exactly 85 BPM, having a clear hint to help you adjust your stride comes in very handy.
• The beat must be present in the song from beginning to end. IN some great songs with just the right beat, the artist decodes to do a guitar solo in the middle and they kill the percussion, or he decides to do a change in rhythm for a few seconds and you can't run to that.
• This is not common, but some songs have lyrics that refer to running, achieving a goal or have a theme something that you can make part of your running. As an example, repeatedly playing Queen's The Show Must Go On helped me "go on" running for the last three miles of 2009 Rails to Trails without breaking into a walk, helping me achieve 3:59:48. Walking just for a minute would have eliminated my chance of breaking for hours that day.

The final song list (a.k.a. the Golden List), has only 31 songs. I don't like to have too many, so in case of need I can easily skip a few to find the one I desperately need. I will share it with you, but please know this is a very powerful list and should be used with caution (with great power comes great responsibility). The first day I took it for a spin, I got a PR (beat my own fastest time for an 8 mile run on road by 7 seconds per mile). Running with it from mile one of a marathon can result in running too fast and then no song can save you when you have run out of power.

With that, let me introduce you to (drumroll)... the Golden List:

The list has a little bit of everything. Even with similar beat, some songs help you slow down and others speed up. For example, Un Año de Amor and No Ordinary Love are great to remind you not to go too fast even though both have one more BPM than Good Thing, which will prompt you to pick up the pace. Don't ask me why. It's part of the magic of this list.

If you try it, you will find that some songs require faith. Dire Straits Private Investigations has exactly 85 BPM, but feels much slower. Be one with the list and you will find every one of the 85 beats. This is not an issue with Phil Collin's Don't Lose my Number, The Rolling Stone's Paint it Black, Elvis' Don't be Cruel or Van Morrison's Brown Eyed Girl, great songs that have a marked beat from the start.

Pink Shoelaces by Dodie Stevens turned out to be a surprise find. A song that I would not listed on any other context, is just perfect for running. San Francisco Bay Blues by Eric Clapton has already been mentioned several times on this blog and it is just the perfect song. I dare you to take a walking break while it plays!

I admit to having added Joplin's Me and Bobby McGee which is not a perfect fit and Everett's Bad Things, which ha not yet been vetted (just added that one thinking it may work). I vouch for the rest, even though I understand you may want to skip on the Spanish ones.

Either way, here it is for you... use it for good and not for evil.