one eighty

In my mentor certification class the other night we learned about good form running and how the proper cadence when you're running is for your feet to hit the ground one hundred and eighty times per minute.  That's ninety times for the right foot and ninety times for the left foot each minute.

In our session the coach actually used a metronome on a website and set it to 180 bpm and had us run around the room.  It was surprisingly helpful.

That has prompted me to analyze the music I've been listening to on my runs and that lead me to this article about running music.  It was pretty interesting to read and the author has already done most of the research for me so I followed their advice and went to this site.

RunningPlaylist.net is helpful, but not perfect.  I like that they give me an iTunes link and an Amazon link (because you know I'm not an Apple girl).  I also like that you can preview the YouTube video with the links provided.  But I especially like that you can click the categories on the right and find a list of songs that are 180 bpm or browse the songs by category. 

The things I don't like about this site include the fact that I can't search one of my own personal songs and find out the speed of it.  I also don't like that there's not a Christian music category....

Anyway, there MUST be a better way to do this.

This article offers an explanation of why it's so complicated to find mathematically perfect running songs and I do like the two extensive playlists it gives (hip hop and rock/other).  It certainly explains why "Hey Ya" is such a good song to exercise to, but that doesn't help me with new music.

Sometimes I just make a list of songs I notice other bloggers talking about running to and then I listen to them on Amazon if I've never heard them or a flag the post in Google Reader and return to it when I'm making a new playlist.  Not that helpful, but it works.

What do you do to find good running music?  What are some of your favorite songs to work out to?  I need some new music.