Usually I run alone, but of late I have added in some buddies to keep me company and help me keep the running rhythm. Well I am just trying to be cute, I started to listen to music while running and find is strangely appealing. After a few runs, I am starting to get the feel that some music works better than others. There is a need to find ones natural rhythm and find music that suits it.

My first best was to load up the iPod* with a bunch of tracks that I thought are good for running. Some Pop, some Rock, some Jazz, some Dance and some I have not heard in a long while.

Michael Jackson: This was a surprise. The songs are either too fast or too slow for me. I guess they are designed for MJ to dance or as ballads. I cannot keep up either way. However, I realized there is a lovely funk riff in Scream, which incidentally will go into my running playlist.

Thelonious Monk: A definite No. I guess most jazz is going to be difficult to run to. There is a strict emphasis on rhythm but Monk’s music is very fragmented. It is great to listen to but running to fragmented rhythm is not something I want to do. Needs lot of experimenting to find the right songs, but I guess it is all part of training.

Mahavishnu Orchestra: This is a surprise, I thought it too fast, but I can actually run at half the pace . I will experiment a bit to find the right songs…

Weather Report: Same as Mahavishnu Orchestra. Too fast but just nice at half pace. And the music is crazy wonderful.

Placebo: I never thought I would listen to placebo for more than a few minutes. But they seem to compose music at the right pace for me. Many many songs work well for the run.

U2: Ugh. I love the band, but their pacing is so inconsistent song after song, I find it very distracting to run with.

Simon & Garfunkel: Good pacing, especially when I want to take it slow, but the motivation drains. I will have to intersperse placebo with S&G and get some interval runs (though it seems yucky to play them one after another).

Wir Sind Helden: Another shocker. I got their albums from a friend and they found their way into my playlist by chance. But it is another band that plays just for me to run. Good pacing. It also helps that I don’t understand German

There is a lot more music I can think that will be good to run to. Soul, funk are areas I have not experimented yet. REM seems like a running kind of band. Have not tapped into electronic music yet. Not that I have particular interest, I may end up discovering new music through this process too. I am kind of liking the idea of music motivating the running and run motivating new discovery. It can only be good I think.

* Note: iPod is synonymous with “a music player”.

I love my numbers. So much so that I have made a career out of staring at them. So when I run my blog, I am inclined to look at my figures at a regular interval. FYI, I use Google Analytics to collect stats and it provides me with enough flexibility to slice and dice the data.

The trouble in getting too involved with anything is that at some point, it will turn around and kick you in the goolies. I don’t mind it but thinking about this prospect is a downer and I call the condition creatively as the “Analytic Depression”. It does not help when your stats look like this.

The Left side is mid March and the right side is mid-end April.

March was a great month, I had recently taken the Trans-Siberian trip and I have been brimming with enthusiasm to share my stories. I wrote a lot and I guess it is a popular topic that people are seeking information about. After a few weeks, I have been at work and generally uninspired to write. And as a consequence, the audience started dimming and the traffic is scraping the bottom of the barrel in April.

In march, the worm has been steady and I was pretty happy about it. To the extent that when things started to go down, I felt bad. It is funny how I can get carried away by something so senseless and write an article about it. No wonder people feel attached to their spouses, family, children, friends etc., and regret when things don’t go the way they want it to.

The trick to deal with this is probably to not worry about the outcome but enjoy the process. I like to write not because someone wants to read (though the recognition adds to the enthusiasm). Does that mean that I will stop watching analytics? Of course not. Like Travis Bickle on Taxi Driver, I will be stalking and watching but unlike Bickle, I will keep the distance and appreciate the difference between process and the outcome.

Note: The self referential nature of the article is totally Fellini’s fault. I had a over dose over the weekend.

Really, Earth day?

Jokes aside, I am all for people working toward making the world a better place to live, make it more hospitable and probably, leave it cleaner for the future generations. What I am not for is the unusually huge amounts of resources spent to “Educate” people to switch off the lights for 60 minutes.

The movement of awareness should be ground up, children should be taught to stop wasting food and water, do their own chores, figure out a way to do things with less resources. The idea of commercializing earth day as a seasonal produce and spending shit loads of resources promoting the event seems like a lot of bullshit. It is like christmas, once a somber religious festival, now a money spinner. Earth day has gone that way, it seems to be a Date night, not a time for people to contemplate the damage done to the earth. I am sure the are success measures for the marketing campaign and someone will show stats on the achievements of the event. But to me it is all humbug, unless I see children pushing the agenda, I dont believe the movement to save the ‘planet’ will garner any momentum.