The Beat Goes On

Another 6.2 miles on the treadmill today. Nothing special, just gettin' 'er done. Did 8 sets of strides during the fifth/sixth mile, about 30 seconds, 6:20-6:00 pace (I was on the mill that maxes out at 10mph), pretty relaxed, 60-90 seconds between each. Shin's a little worse for wear, better get me to an elliptical tomorrow, what a drag.

I'm suprised how much I'm enjoying music while treadmill running, I must look like an idiot, I actually sing along or play air drums sometimes, it can be very motivating; I don't think I'm annoying anyone since everyone else (everyone!) also has headphones on.

I wish the iPod Shuffle had a feature where I could speed or slow the tempo of the song slightly, so I could more often run in sync with the beat. A very few songs are just right, for example, REM's Harborcoat (from their very excellent third album, Reckoning) is good for me - I measured the beats per minute using this nifty beats per minute calculator, it's about 80-81 beats per minute, which jives with what I've measured my (relatively slow) stride rate to be (160-165 strides/steps per minute, at least for my easy-ish training non-tempo runs). There's also a site, JogTunes, which lists beats per minute for songs, but there's nothing much there I like.

So I've gotten in the habit of doing very brisk walks on the treadmill after my runs, like 4.8 to 5.1 mph, for a quarter to half a mile. I can really feel it in my shin muscles. Today I did three quarters, maybe overdid it, later I got a couple sharp pains on the bottom of my left foot - plantar fascia trouble?