Entries tagged with “motivation” from TRI-ing harder

In a sometimes noisy office, I'm always looking for ways to drown out the outside world. Usually this means an ipod or maybe streaming my music from home via Squeezecenter. But with either of those I always tend to listen to the same old music.  A bit of opera to make me look xclever, and then just the same old 80s,90s and 00s music I always listen to.

Recently though I've discovered Last.FM, a British based website that lets you stream unlimited music tracks that suits your tastes - for FREE!. It's fantastic to be able to type in the name of an artist and then be able to listen to a personalised 'Station'  of music from that artist and others like it. I think the system picks tracks based on other user's recommendations of similar artists and it works really well.  Whenever I put in a favourite artist, the station I get contains at least another 5 or 10 artists that I love just as much.

I especially like the exploratory feel, with new artists constantly being offered to you without you having to search them out. Because they will be based on similar artists to the ones you like, there's a good chance you'll want to listen.  If not, you can click 'skip' or even 'ban' tracks you don't want to hear again.  If you like a new artists you can 'love' a track or add it to your playlist, making it easier to hear again in future.  Genius.

You can also make use of 'Scrobbling' which is a way of letting your friends (and others) know what you're listening to.  Usually this is done transparently without you having to do a thing.  As you play your music, the last.fm website is updated with what you're listening to, giving others a chance to explore.

I also love the fact that it works across all types of devices.  You can use your browser to listen with a Flash player, my Squeezecenter has a plugin for last.fm, it integrates with most music players like Songbird, iTunes, Amarok and Rhythmbox.  There's also a standalone client for Windows, OSX and Unix which gives you quick and easy access to your own radio stations and the Love/Hate buttons.  You can even install it on your iphone or Series 60 mobile phone (using a plugin called Mobbler).  I know it's geeky, but being able to wander around listening to music on my Nokia N95 and know that other people can see what I'm listening to is just brilliant!

Anyway, I'm off to bed to listen to my last.fm 'sleep' station.  If you do happen to stop by last.fm, my username is cleanthes.  Feel free to say hello and listen in to some of my favourites.

I have many half-baked theories on what motivates me and might motivate other people.  Here are some of my recent ones:

1. Train with others
This is something that everyone who's ever trained in a group knows - training with others works you harder than training on your own.  Obviously, this assumes you're all of a similar level, and all training as opposed to just out for a gentle bike ride to the pub... On your own, it's easy to back off, tell yourself you've done enough, or get lost in the moment and forget you're meant to be training (my mind wanders terribly when I'm swimming, for instance). 

But if there are others around you will be able to challenge each other. One of you lifts off but the other will keep pushing, if your buddy sprints up the hill you have to follow them.  And these little races make all the difference in turning a mediocre session into one that will have you vomiting at the end.

As anyone who knows me, or reads my Facebook profile would know I'm not normally a religious man.  But tonight I felt unusual forces were at play...

Although I've been doing more running this year, I'm not really pushing the distances.  I tend to do short, easy, 2 mile runs at lunchtime with work colleagues, and my gym runs are normally brick sessions combining a 40k cycle with a run.  These are normally only 5k runs at best because I'm hot, knackered and bored by this time.   Windsor is now only 4 weeks away so I'm getting nervous about the 10k run at the end and I just know I need to do some more and longer runs. 

It was a lovely sunny evening today and so I decided to go for a run.  Heading down to Cutteslowe Park's measured mile, my plan was to complete 10k (just over 6 laps). 

Today's 10k was much more fun than I expected and I managed to get round in just over 52 minutes. Fifty two minutes - Woof! Woof!  I was expecting to take 56+ minutes, so I'm really delighted with 52.  I even managed to speed up a little bit for the second 5k which was nice.

Firstly, I have to say that the race was really well organised and marshalled, so thanks should go to to everyone at ERR for their hard work.  The weather was just right too (I don't think they organised that): mild, wind-free and a little bit sunny at times.  The two-lap course of Eynsham is very flat and easy underfoot, with only the odd leaf-covered or grassy bit.  As far as I could tell nobody fell on their arse or injured anything through slips.

This was my first mass start on a run - previously I've only done runs in triathlons which are never 'mass' run starts because everyone hops off their bike at different times - so it was interesting.  I met up with Ollie and Liz on the start line and we discussed tactics and weather. Then in not time I was in the middle of the 'start line shuffle' that I've seen in the London Marathon so many times.   Within a few seconds though I was jogging along at an easy pace and trying to work out what 56/10 was (maths is not my strong point!).

I'd agreed with Ollie that I didn't want any company on the way round - I didn't want to either slow him down on his 45-50 minute pace or go too fast in trying to keep up with him that I blew up at 6k. So we had a quick 1 minute chat and then he dashed off through a gap of slow-moving runners. 

The chap in the UK Nike+ advert (see YouTube) is "addicted" to running.  For those of you who haven't seen the Nike+, see this post.

Now motivation to run has long been a problem for me.  I don't really enjoy running yet, and it always feels soooo sllooooowwww (probably because I'm doing it wrong).  Why plod along at 12kmph when I could be whizzing along on my bike at 40kmph instead?  Goddamit people, I've got places to go!   So I don't run as often as I should, and when I do run I tend to get bored pretty quickly.  Normally boredom sets in after about the first 1km, which makes 5km more of an achievement that you might have thought!

As a geek who can't run far without getting bored and who has a need to learn how to run 10k for an Olympic distance triathlon next year, the answer seems obvious. I need something addictive.  So an ipod nano and nike+ has been on my wish list for some time.   But my wish list is quite long (and my pockets are not that deep), so I've sulkily coped with poor running motivation for some time.  But it turns out I was wrong.  I don't need to spend money to go faster.