Running with Tunes

Before any of you get the wrong impression, I am not a capital "R" Runner.  I suck at running, get no majestic "runner's high" from plodding along, and generally only started doing it last year because I'm getting old and out of shape and my kids can now catch me when I play tag with them.  With all of that preamble out of the way, I thought I'd provide the method for my madness.

That method, of course, is to use music to get by out there on the road.  I had tried running in the past, but I suck at pacing myself.  So I would blaze out and haul ass for 4 minutes of semi-sprint before collapsing and giving up.  I tried running with music--angry, screaming, rock and metal songs that I felt like would motivate me to slog through the pain, break on through, and reach the running man's nirvana of enjoying my run.  This also did not work at all, until I threw Fall Out Boy into my running mix.

You may not remember Fall Out Boy.  Full-on guilty pleasure for me that I ever listened to them, much less that I enjoy their emo-rock-with-awful-titles to this day.  (I mean, seriously.  Sample titles: "A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More 'Touch Me'" or "I'm Like a Lawyer With the Way I'm Always Trying to Get You Off (Me & You)"  Blerg.)  However, self-shaming aside, I found that their song "Sugar, We're Going Down" has the exact right pace for me to run without tiring myself out in seconds.

After that discovery, I found out that there are many nerds who try to pace their runs, and that handy websites (I like jog.fm) will let you search music by beats per minute to make a paced running set list.  Awesome.  My pace is generally about 160 BPM (and 80 BPM will also work at double-time), so my best songs have been:

Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We're Going Down
Queens of the Stone Age - You Think I Ain't Worth a Dollar...
Linkin Park - Somewhere I Belong
System of a Down - Aerials
The Donnas - Too Bad About Your Girl
Kanye West - Can't Tell Me Nothin'
Sugar - If I Can't Change Your Mind
The Donnas - Take it Off
A$AP Rocky - Goldie
Kanye West - Power (except for the weird interlude in the middle)
Kelly Clarkson - Breakaway
Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
Nelly - Country Grammar
Weezer - Sweater Song
Andrew WK - Party Hard (excellent one, driving and full of HEYs I can moan as I trudge along)
POD - Alive
ZZ Top - La Grange
Muse - Unnatural Selection (really good one, except for the slowish interlude in the middle)
Eminem - Square Dance
Ice Cube - Good Day
Green Day - Uptight
Green Day - 21 Guns
My Chemical Romance - Sleep
Thin Lizzy - Boys are Back in Town

I've got some others, but these are all the ones that are pretty solidly in my cadence and work really well.

I also made a 170-ish playlist at one point when I was feeling frisky.
Queens of the Stone Age - Go with the Flow (really good one to motivate)
T.I. - Top Back
Foo Fighters - The Pretender
Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song
T.I. - You Know What it is
Big Boi - Shine Blockas
Beck - Loser
Tom Petty - Runnin Down a Dream
King of Leon - Crawl

But in general, that pace tires me out too quickly so I haven't played much with that playlist.  I've gotten old and lazy.