The sound of music.

Some of you may notice that the title of this entry is very much like the name of a well known musical. However I am NOT making a reference to said musical hence the lack of capital letters.
Not that I'm against it or anything it's just not my cup of tea.
Although all those hills would make for an excellent morning jog.
And if there were, perhaps, some people playing music then I could listen whilst I ran up the aforementioned hills.

I find listening to music when I'm out running or cycling takes my mind off the task at hand and somehow makes it easier. All of a sudden I'm focusing on my pace and getting it in time with the music. Getting into a good old groove. Before too long I'm back where I started and my earphones are full of sweat.

I used to listen to music when I cycled to and from work and it took out the monotony of the twice-daily slog.

I used to listen to music in the gym when I was lifting up heavy weights and putting them back down again.

I used to listen to music when I ran. Wherever I ran.

But over time I forgot what the outside world sounded like. I couldn't remember a time when I hadn't had my headphones clamped around my skull pumping uplifting noise into my aural channels.

Running in the woods hearing the wind in the trees, the squelch and slap of thick mud underfoot, the rain-drummer beating it's snare pattern onto newly formed skins of water.

The constant whirr of tyre on tarmac and the wind whistling past my ears. The feeling of comparative speed exacerbated by the wind vectoring past my ears as I turned my head into corner after corner.

And, well... I need to block out the music channel in the gym. You can only lift so much without needing to cry out to the gods "GIVE ME METAL!" Lady Ga-Ga just doesn't cut it.

So now I run and cycle headset free. Listening to my aching bones as they creak with every bio-mechanical movement. But able to really reflect on the day rather than prolong it by blocking out my brain with hard techno.




Plus my iPod is broken.

I put it in the washing machine.

I was sad.

But if I hadn't had such a mishap I would have missed out on a remnant of the summer solstice. As I ran up to Stonehenge recently (it's right down the road!) I saw in the distance an old library bus with a large tent pitched behind it. As I drew closer I could make out the distinct sound of some psychedelic trance. As I gained ground towards the bus I heard the slightly off-time rhythm of a drummer laying their own pattern on top of the music which, by now, I had figured out was coming from a small PA in the tent. Not just bongos mind you. An actual drum kit. Snare, hi-hats and a kick drum banging over the top of the wobbly acid bass-line.

As a smile spread across my face and my feet aligned themselves with this free feed of four-beat fantastica I ran on, back home, happy that I hadn't been listening to something else.

Lady Ga-Ga is now my prime source of aggression and rage in the gym.