See ya later Alligator

Day:         64

Distance: 6.82km

Time:       43:13 secs

Calories:  528

My wife described the bedraggled figure who staggered through the front door after yesterday's long run as a "broken man". She had a point. After sitting down for any amount of time my legs felt incredibly stiff when I got up to do something. Walking down stairs this morning wasn't much fun either. So, heading out on a cold Monday night for a 45 minute long run at 'easy' tempo felt like some kind of achievement.

My legs are still hurting, but it seems to me that it's important to get out and stretch them with an unchallenging run. That means going at a a fairly slow pace and avoiding even the merest suggestion of a hill climb.

As in previous weeks my soundtrack for this slow run is the National, but for a slight change I opt for the album "Alligator" rather than "High Violet". Although it's another great album that I love listening to it's just not right for this kind of run. Where "High Violet" maintains a similar pace across an entire album "Alligator" is much more varied and includes a couple of more up tempo numbers like "Abel" and "Mr November". That said, I've just checked Run Keeper and it turns out that my average pace in this run was considerably slower than in the same run last week when I listened to "High Violet" (6:20 mins/km compared with 6:05 mins/km). I suspect this has more to do with yesterday's 29 kilometres rather than any musical accompaniment.

While on the subject of music I realise that I haven't written about the actual running playlist for some time. At 92 songs and 4.7 hours long it is pretty much as long as I need it to be, but I will consider it a work in progress up until running the London Marathon. 

I got to thinking about it while listening to British Sea Power's new album "Valhalla Dancehall" on my way home tonight. The album opens with the anthemic protest song "Who's in control" and as soon as the guitar riff kicked in 10 seconds into the track I knew that this was exactly the kind of thing that I need on the playlist. 

So, that's been added along with "White Riot" by the Clash (I can't believe it wasn't already on there) and "The People" by the Music which was suggested by a good friend of mine recently. I'm looking forward to trying these three out on my next run.

These additions mean that I'm able to jettison a couple of tracks which really haven't been working for me recently; "I like you so much better when you're naked" by Ida Maria, "Nobody move, nobody get hurt" by We Are Scientists and "Machinehead" by Bush. I still like all these songs but they haven't had the desired effect of firing me up and I've even found myself skipping to the next song when they've come on during recent runs.

There will no doubt be more additions and deletions in the coming weeks. Thanks to those of you who have suggested songs, if anyone else has a suggestion please feel free to leave a comment.