Meet Adele, aka Fit Artist.

When she’s not running she’s an artist doing arresting things with lost objects...

fusing art and sport...

fusing motherhood and art...

Any how, she’s just test driven AudioFuel, you can read more of her delightful accounts of being a FitArtist here.

For now, this is her story of a first outing with AudioFuel.

AudioFuelled Run

Regular readers will know that I don’t generally run to music – I find I go too fast, have the urge to stop and dance, and forget how loud I am breathing when I scare the pants off dog-walkers as I approach from behind. So, I was interested to see how my running might fair with the addition of some Audiofuel tunes pumping in my ears. First of all I got into a bit of a pickle by our front gate, trying to get to grips with both my Garmin and Edward’s MP3 player at the same time. As a result, I ignored the fact that my Garmin had not yet picked up a signal, and set off anyway, only having to stop again down the road and wait for a signal…again. Once everything was in place and I had stopped fiddling with the earphones (I wish someone would make something that doesn’t always pop out of little ears) I set off around the park.

I really did need a boost, with this chesty cough challenging me at every turn, and I found it in this music. It felt a bit weird at first having a sexy smooth-sounding man uttering encouragement in my ear, but I soon got used to his occasional instruction and obediently tried to keep time to his ‘one-two-three-four’. Now there has been lots of discussion recently (Running Matters, Hauling my Carcass) about running form and  if it’s possible or even necessary to change this, and I became very aware of my body on this run, trying to keep to a set pace, noticing my strides getting longer, attempting to pull them back and stay contained. I wonder if it looked as odd as it felt when I suddenly shortened my stride, like a lycra-clad speedy gonzales, my feet a hazy blur beneath me.

I really did push myself, going much faster at times than I normally would, and the clubby, dancey beat helped push me along. The best bit was when I found myself running alongside another runner, doing that irritating thing where you are both running at the same pace, and you feel you will never lose them, until the next track came on and the BPM increased, I left him behind in a cloud of cut grass! I don’t think I would ever normally be so cheeky, but I did it and I kept the pace up for another lap of the park. Once this fleetness had got me floating on air, the voice returned and told me to take it a bit easier now and slow things down, it’s a shame this coincided with ‘the big hill’, but I resumed the slowing down once I’d got to the top.

I really enjoyed this run and I do think doing this kind of pace once a week or so could help me cut a bit of time off my 5k and 10k times, as I am planning on doing over the next few months.