Occasionally, I’ll get a question or a comment asking what sort of music I listen to when I’m running.

The answer is usually: nothing–I like the sound of my own crazy thoughts. I sit at a computer or have my iPhone attached to me all day, so I spend too much of the day indoors, attached to technology. I like to run outside with no music, because it’s the closest to a bit of (free) serenity that I’ll get in New York City.

  

But when I’m marathon training and have covered every inch of the West Side Highway and a lot of the East River path multiple times, sometimes I need some music to tune out the “this is so hard” and “I don’t want to do this” thoughts.

Especially when my plan calls for 9 miles, 5 of them at tempo pace.

That calls for some music.

But I hate making playlists, because I get sick of them so quickly, so I rely on the Genius function in iTunes to make me a playlist.

Last year, I was really into Chicken Fried, so I asked iTunes to base a playlist off of that.

Yes, there are at least three Christmas songs on this playlist.

Yes, I lip-synced most of these songs while I was running. It was like running karaoke.

And yes, I NAILED that tempo.

9 miles, 1 hour, 23 minutes.

Tempo miles: 8:28, 8:12, 8:27, 8:42, 8:25.

And no, I will probably never share one of my terrible playlists with you ever again.

Related to my love of Apple, I can’t wait for my new iPhone to come. Maybe I won’t run with it, and maybe the home button will actually work. My phone has been operating really slowly for at least the past year, so I will probably tackle the UPS man tomorrow for my new baby.

How it made it from Korea to Louisville faster than from Louisville to New York, I’ll never know.

I’ve usually gotten the new iPhones as soon as they’ve come out (except the 3GS/4S because those were obviously just holdover models between major releases) because I’ve always been able to sell the old one on Craigslist and either break even or only come out having paid somewhere around $30-40.

One of my coworkers told me recently about Gazelle.com. They buy back your iPhone and send you money for it!

Well, okay!

There’s no fancy referral link up there, and Gazelle’s not paying me to say nice things.

This is just freaking awesome, is all.

So: music or no music while running? And did you order the new iPhone?