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Category Archives: Running

What’s On Your Workout Playlist? Vol 2.

16 Aug

A good running playlist (and the promise of a beer afterwards) will get me through any race happy! Virginia Beach Rock n' Roll Half-Marathon September 2008

We’re down to less than 12 weeks before the Savannah Rock n’ Roll Half-Marathon – time for the serious training to kick in. This will be my fifth half and while running and I will never be besties, I do get a huge sense of accomplishment out of it.

However, I would not be able to run a foot without my trusty little iPod Shuffle and my favorite Philips earbuds (which I fear may die before the half…dang fraying wires). Forget my carb count and food intake, how much water I’ve consumed, or how much sleep I got the night before – the key to my success on long runs is my running playlist. Unlike a lot of runners, I don’t craft my playlists around BPM; I more or less go with songs I love, things that inspire me, that bring back good memories (so that when I’m cursing the hill at mile 8, at least I’m doing it with a smile!).

I like to run to the same playlist so that I know where I should be…you know, when “Pumped Up Kicks” is on, I should be at roughly 3.5 miles. That kind of thing. But, as my training moves along and I figure out where I’m hitting walls and when I’m on cruise control, my playlist evolves to help give me the boosts that I need – or remind me to slow it down. There’s nothing better than hearing Moby’s, “Bodyrock” at mile 9 when I’m flagging and re-finding my groove!

So, as previously promised, I’m posting the updated & revised version of my playlist here. From the search stats on the blog, I’ve figured out that a LOT of people are looking for workout and running playlist songs, so I’m happy to share so that maybe one of you will find something new. I’ve linked every song to its iTunes, Amazon and/or Bandcamp page for quick and easy buying (after all that running, I know, it’s too much effort to have to track down these tunes!). There are even a handful that are available for free download – take advantage of these aritsts’ generosity and pick up some tunes for your running playlist!

Let me know if you have any great additions for me or if you find something new here that’s been a great addition to your playlist!

Happy running!

 
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Posted by on August 16, 2011 in Inspirations, Music, Running

 

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What’s on your workout playlist?

04 Jun

Me and Mindy after the San Antonio Rock n' Roll Half-Marathon in November 2009.

Okay, kids.  I need your help.

Training for the half-marathon (because I need pre-training training!) has begun in earnest.  It’s exactly five months from today, so it’s time to start getting motivated.  Of course, it’s hotter than blazes outside and I didn’t go out until 10:30 AM this morning, so after only two miles, I looked like a giant purple beet, but at least I got out there, right?

However, I’m going to need motivation to get through the summer months – did I mention I live in North Carolina and it is rather reminiscent of a sauna in Hell come July and August?  Which brings me to my point…musical motivation.  I need it.  I crave it.  I want new stuff.

So, I started piecing together my Summer Running Playlist this morning.  Creating a running playlist, like all of my Krissie Mixes, takes forever for me to get right.  And I have to have songs that have words – I can’t do all those techno-housey songs that go on forever with just beats. My perfect mix builds up slowly (for pacing purposes), and then gets really rocky and rhythmic in the middle, slows down a bit, and then has a killer finish so I end on a high note.  And I’ll admit, I have my favorites that make their way onto every mix – Moby, Luna Halo.  And there’s stuff on my running playlists that would probably shock some folks – New Kids on the Block, Pink, totally Top 40 stuff.  Hey, if it’s a good running song, it’s a good running song!

But I digress…as of right now, the Summer Running Playlist is only about 45 minutes long, but here’s how we’re looking (and this will be a constantly evolving list!):

1. Probably Nothing – Red Wanting Blue
2. Neon Eyes – Saints of Valory
3. MoneyGrabber – Fitz & The Tantrums (The Gin Mill inspired song! Hear it every time I’m there!)
4. Scale Your Walls – The Enemy Lovers
5. Every Tear Drop Is A Waterfall – Coldplay
6. Shot In the Dark – Augustana
7. Pumped Up Kicks – Foster the People (Shawn Fisher, this is your fault!)
8. Sex U – The Hundred Days (Shelia Taylor recommendation and road tested this morning – awesome to run to!)
9. Animal – Neon Trees
10. Matador – The Soldier Thread
11. Bodyrock – Moby
12. Kings & Queens – Luna Halo

I’d like to get this playlist up to about two hours and twenty minutes worth of serious running music.  I’ve got tons, but I need some fresh blood!  What are your favorite workout songs?  Bring ‘em on!  Nothing is off limits!  Post your recommendations as comments or shoot me an e-mail.  Can’t wait to hear what music I should be running to….

 
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Posted by on June 4, 2011 in Music, Running

 

Running. With music, of course.

26 May

I’ve gotten fat.

There’s really no sense in trying to sweeten it – I’ve probably put on 30 pounds since my birthday last year.  The last 10 months of my life have been upside down crazy.  I can come up with any number of excuses for being lazy:  Mom got her cancer diagnosis, and I was preoccupied with her care.   I started working mad numbers of hours.  I was depressed about everything.  Those are all true statements.

But it doesn’t change the fact that I just stopped any kind of physical activity altogether and started eating terribly.

But, I’m going to fix it. Going to get back to running. Improve my diet. Starting now.

I do better with motivation, a reason, a sense of purpose, whatever you want to call it.  So this morning, I signed up for my sixth half-marathon – November 5th.  I haven’t run in months, and I know I’m going to have to work extra hard to get back to where I was, but I need to do it.  Because I hate looking at myself in the mirror right now – and that’s a reason to do this.  Plus, it cost me nearly $100 bucks to register.   And that’s big motivation for me –  there’s no way I’ll let $100 go to waste!

Somehow, writing this out validates my need to do this even more, and makes me accountable to those people that read my blog.

Of course, I can’t do anything without rewarding myself.  And running is inextricably linked to music for me.  I cannot run a foot without music in my ears.  So I signed up for a Rock n’ Roll race.  A band at every mile along the course – hello reward!  I’ve done three of them before, and they’re really well organized and a ton of fun.  And when I ran San Antonio, some band along the course was covering Will Hoge.  If that’s not awesome, I don’t know what is!

The half-marathon may only be 13.1 miles, but it’s going to be a long road getting there.  I’ve got a little over 23 weeks – 163 days in total. My journey starts now.

Wish me luck.

 
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Posted by on May 26, 2011 in Inspirations, Running

 

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Running: Facing my biggest competitor

18 Oct

I am not an athlete.

That’s what I say to myself nearly every time I double knot my running shoes and step out the door for a run. Because in my heart of hearts, even though I’ve run hundreds and hundreds of miles over the past three years, I still do not think of myself as a runner. In my brain, I’m still an awkward teenager with no grace, no coordination and no athletic ability. I am, without a doubt, my own biggest competitor.

If they are lucky, some people run for love of the sport. A lot of people, I find, run for fitness. Many runners that I’ve met love the competition. Me, I run for the self-challenge. When I’m out there pounding the pavement, it’s all about beating that inner teenager geek: the unpopular bookworm who didn’t ever really fit in.

In high school, I was a really smart kid – graduated second in my class. I was in all the “honors” classes (or whatever we called them). A lot of the folks in my classes were the wealthier, popular kids that shopped at The Gap (to this day, I have an aversion to The Gap that is totally illogical, but it makes me feel inferior still!). The rich kids were all in the ski club. If you weren’t popular because you had money, you were popular because you played a sport. And man, we had some crazy good athletes at my school. Our cross-country and track teams were amazing.

Now me? I may have been in the smart kid classes, but I was not wealthy, popular or athletically inclined. I was on the newspaper staff, the yearbook staff, and in the creative writing club. I was a total geek. I never felt like I fit in with the kids in my classes. My clothes were not “cool,” I didn’t have the money to join the ski club, and I was always the last one picked for teams in gym class because anything the required coordination was totally beyond my ability.

I secretly wished every day that I was in the cool crowd. I thought that if I tried something and failed at it, that people would make fun of me, that they would like me less. I loved words and writing and being smart – those were the things I was good at doing, at which I knew I wouldn’t fail. And that was the world to which I relegated myself. I was scared of making a fool of myself for trying anything outside of my world.

Of course, I went to college and rapidly figured out that the balance of cool vs. geek existed everywhere and transcended money, athletic and intellectual ability – and that it was okay to be myself and that people liked me for being myself. But there are some emotional scars that never leave, and high school will always be there for me: this big, looming reminder that once upon a time, I wasn’t okay with myself.

Even now, as an adult, there are days when I face those high school fears – that failing at something new will make people like me less. I’ve learned to tackle the fears, of course, and realize that the only way you get good at something is to fail at it and get better at failing, then succeed clumsily, and then succeed well. But the fear of failure, of wanting people to “approve” of me, is always there, in the back of my mind.

And that idea, that version of me, is who I run against. Every time I go just a little bit farther, just a little bit faster, I’m keeping that scared, unsure of herself, uncoordinated little girl at bay. Because if I can do these runs, I can do anything that I never thought myself capable of doing.

 
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Posted by on October 18, 2009 in Running

 

Laundry List

07 Apr

Prepare for a boring, state-of-the-Krissie-union blog. You may just want to skip it.

It’s Monday night. I should be cleaning my apartment and preparing for my family’s arrival this weekend for Easter. Instead, I’ve been working on updating this blog and getting caught up on all things internet. It’s been a busy month…and I’m ready for things to slow down. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be happening anytime soon!

So yes, the family is coming down this weekend. I’m usually the one to travel, so it’s nice to be staying put for once. Not sure what I’m going to do to entertain everyone for three days, but I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a lot of Scrabble action.

I’m also less than two weeks away from Charlotte Racefest. This will be my third half-marathon in as many years. I have to admit – I have not trained as well as I should have for this one. A little overly confident going in, but now that it’s getting close, I’m really getting anxious. This is going to be a tough course, I think, more like Nashville than Virginia Beach (in other words, not as flat). I’m shooting for a goal time of 2:15 to finish. That would be a 13 minute improvement over my time for VA Beach last year. Ambitious, I know…and I’m going to feel super disappointed in myself if I don’t make it, but I have to push myself!

Work is quite busy right now and we’re coming up on three conferences in a row. Needless to say, once my race is wrapped up, I’ll be in a work zone until mid-May.

And, of course, I will have a few musical distractions to keep me singing happy songs…Tim Brantley, Will Hoge, Bruce, Amos Lee.

It will be Memorial Day before I know it…

And then, summer is here. I haven’t really decided what I’m going to do this summer for a vacation, if I take one at all. I do have one 3-day weekend that I’ve scheduled to go down to Isle of Palms for the weekend…Tonic and Green River Ordinance playing at The Windjammer. Want a combination that can’t be beat…give me the beach and two great bands, plus, good friends coming along for the journey (and hopefully, some Feil brothers in attendance to put the icing on the proverbial cake).

Speaking of friends, I’ve had a lot of solid “friend” time over the past four weeks. That makes me happy…I’m also surprised at how some of my friendships are changing. There’s a few that have been really “in flux” lately. Some of that is good, some of it is sad and hard to swallow. I hate watching friendships fade, but I guess it happens as life moves on. People get to different places in their lives and don’t understand what the other one is going through, despite their best attempts to do so. Yes, sometimes there are circumstances that lead to the closure of friendships, but more often than not, it seems to be just a gradual distancing. The time between phone calls gets longer, visits get shorter, your views diverge radically where they once were very similar, tempers flare, feelings get hurt and not discussed because it seems like too much effort…and before you know it, the friendship is gone. *sigh* Like I said, sad. But sometimes, it happens and you just have to think upon your once friend with fond memories and move on…No hard feelings, lots of love, and a wish for them to be happy.

2009 seems to be a year in flux for me. Moving. Friendships changing. The job becoming something entirely different than it once was. Despite the roller coaster up and down of it all, I feel surprisingly at peace. I’m trying to be more open minded about things. Trying to let the little things go. Meeting new people. Challenging myself. Setting new goals. A veritable laundry list of self-improvement items is getting checked off and tallied.

It feels good.

 
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Posted by on April 7, 2009 in Friends & Family, Life in general, Running, Work

 

The Lazy Writer’s Update

10 Jan

The road to hell is paved with writers who are lazy. Trust me. I’m headed there.

I haven’t really felt like blogging the last few days. There’s so much general stuff going on in my life that whenever I sit down to write, I’m overwhelmed by the magnitude of things I want to write about. It wears me out before I even start typing, so I give up.

Anyway, as I’m running on 2.5 hours sleep from last night and I really should be in bed because I am running with the gang in the morning, I have no idea why I’ve chosen now to sit down and make a blog entry. Perhaps because I know that I don’t have a lot of time to dedicate to it (or energy, honestly), I can take the lazy writer’s way out and not feel guilty about it: the list.

So here it is, the quick and dirty list of things going on with me.

1) I haven’t been able to wash my car in over two weeks and it’s frustrating. Why, you ask? Because it literally as been raining every other day. And, of course, they’re calling for rain again this weekend. Tomorrow. During the Panthers playoff game. Thank goodness I don’t have tickets. I’m tired of the rain. I’d like it to stop. Now. I’m soggy.

2) I’m moving. Sad, but true. Hate leaving this space – been here for almost six years – but the time has come to have my own place again. I’m tired of roommates. So I’m moving back to the complex where I lived before I lived here. I liked it there, I was happy…it’s closer to the office and most of the places I do shopping and errands, so it just makes sense.

3) Rock Boat next week! Needs no explanation. SO in need of a vacation.

4) Signed up for half-marathon #1 of the year. My goal is to complete two this year, so this is a good start. The race is here in Charlotte in April. It’ll be good. I think everyone in our little Saturday morning run group is going to do it, ‘cept for Jill because she’ll be recovering from ACL surgery. Speaking of the group, we start our regular runs again this week…I’ve missed them (both the group and the runs). Anyway, good training with my peeps commences at 8 AM tomorrow morning…And the race is 116 days away! http://www.charlotteracefest.com

5) Because of having my own place, budget belt shall be tightened over the next 12 months. Sad, but true. Means fewer shows (it’s going to kill me, trust me), fewer trips, and less fun. I know. It blows. That being said, I’m thinking about driving up to DC for Shane Hines & The Trance’s CD release party for The Glory Journal. Lately, my sensible side has been winning out, though.

So, on top of work stress, I think this is enough to keep me busy for awhile, eh?

 
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Posted by on January 10, 2009 in Life in general, Music, Running, Travel

 
 
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