Anyone else find it difficult running to music?

[agirlinwinter]

I’ve tried listening to music as I’m running and I find it distracts me. I try to run to the beat and end up going faster than I should. I’m finding that I prefer silence (and Jo Wiley) when I’m running. Is it just me?

[Hidden]

I’m the same, I run quicker than I want to when listening to music, i have a metronome app that I have quietly in the background and that works great, I also listen to podcasts instead of music

[Grannyhugs Graduate]

After the joy of graduating c25k the next best thing has been 4 months of running with nature - no music, nobody telling me what to do, bliss. Happy running

[Nilsam Graduate in reply to Grannyhugs]

How lovely. 🧘🏼‍♀️

[Roxdog Graduate]

Everyone has their own preferences - it's not compulsory to have music! For what it's worth, I have my own carefully selected playlist where all the music is slow and rather meditative and I don't think about matching the beat. Then again I am a complete music obsessive (bit of a geek really!)

[SueAppleRun Graduate]

The beat doesn’t really distract me but i do run faster to a faster beat, Willow gets in a strop if a fast song comes on he’s got different play lists to me and mostly one beat

[Wenderwoo Graduate]

I would prefer no music, but find myself constantly counting, which drives my nuts! So I play music to distract me from that. I’ve tried podcasts but get fed up after a few minutes. I’m hoping the counting addiction might go away eventually 😆

[Roxdog Graduate in reply to Wenderwoo]

Is it 1234 or 1 to several thousand!

[Wenderwoo Graduate in reply to Roxdog]

It can be either or both, it’s totally random!

[Boofle999 Graduate]

I can't run WITHOUT music! Hate the sound of myself puffing and panting, really puts me off! The music helps to pass the time and I quite like the beat because it keeps me at a steady pace - I crank it up loud and off I go!

[Alast]

I'm glad it's not just me! When I started C25K I used to count my paces in the runs (about 80 to a minute at the time) purely so I knew how much further I had to go, and could gee myself along ("come on you silly old fool only another 25 to go and you can start walking" type of thing!). This was OK for the first couple of weeks, but I knew that in week 3, starting a run knowing I had around 240 paces to do would be off-putting , so I tried music as a distraction instead. For whatever reason, the first album I chose worked really well for me, but although I thought it would be slow enough, the second album didn't, I ran too fast and couldn't complete all of the runs. I tried the podcast instead of the app, but didn't like their choice of music, so I tried listening to the radio instead, but again music with too quick a beat made me speed up too much. It may have been Run-fish-run who suggested it to me on here, but I now use a metronome app, at a very slow pace (currently slower than my running pace but I'm thinking of changing that soon), to encourage me to slow down. Listening to the spoken word as a distraction was also suggested, so I've downloaded some Radio 4 comedy programmes to my phone, which also happen to be about 30 minutes long, and listen to one of those, with the metronome, and Laura in the C25K app. So far this seems to work, getting me through W4 R1 yesterday and hopefully through R2 tomorrow morning.

[Nilsam Graduate]

I always used to run without music but use it now, but do like podcasts and audio books. Yes, I do get distracted but I am ok with that. 👍

[StA1956]

Glad it's not just me who can't cope with music or the podcast. I just talk to myself to try to slow down and carry a stopwatch.