electronica just doesn't do it for me

March 9, 2009 4:32 PM

How can I create my own Couch to 5K running podcast?

I'm starting the Couch to 5K program and I want to make my own podcast/music track to listen to. All I need is to combine some music tracks together into one long mp3 and record some vocal cues at the appropriate times (start running, start walking). What's a simple way to do this? (I'm on a Mac, with iTunes, if it matters)

posted by kidsleepy to media & arts (7 answers total)

Audacity is a free audio editor that will do everything you need, unless your iTunes have some sort of DRM protection.
posted by calumet43 at 4:49 PM on March 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

You can make playlists in iTunes. That's about it. But this isn't a bad thing. Why not just use existing music, and insert memorable cues? You can find lots of sound clips to use. Find pieces of music you like that will help you with pacing - something mellow to start out, building intensity when you run, and so forth.

There are also a LOT of running podcasts. Search around for something you like. I just found this site with Couch to 5k podcasts, taking their music from magnatunes, which seems to support the artists well (though you probably don't know any of the artists on the label).

Otherwise, as calumet43 said - you can do all the fading, blending, recording and such with Audacity.
posted by filthy light thief at 4:59 PM on March 9, 2009

I have been researching this problem myself and it's like you pulled the question right out of my head. I don't really care for the existing podcasts, either.

I want to second that the best way to do this will be mixing your own with Audacity, as suggested above. That is, unless you have an iPhone or iTouch. There is an iTouch/iPhone application that overlays the cues over top of your music as it plays. This app makes me very jealous of iPhone/iTouch users.
posted by bristolcat at 5:20 PM on March 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

This guy goes through all the steps with doing it with Audacity.
http://www.creativexposurephoto.com/running/
posted by wrnealis at 5:38 PM on March 9, 2009 [4 favorites]

Thanks wrnealis! i knew i wasn't the first person who thought of this.
posted by kidsleepy at 6:56 PM on March 9, 2009

I'm half way through week 6 of the c25k plan, and had the same dilemmas initially. My easy solution was to just sort my itunes music by track length and select songs that are of the appropriate length, slap them in a play list and switch between walking/running, whenever the song changes. So simple.
At the beginning though, when I didn't have enough 1 min or 90 sec songs I used the options command to stop and start songs at certain lengths. This also makes the change a lot more obvious, but takes a bit more time to build the playlists.
posted by bingoes at 7:14 PM on March 9, 2009

I really like using the c25k app for the iphone - you start playing your music (i use a playlist) in the ipod app, then open the c25k app and select your workout week & day. it will play "warmup", "run", "walk", "you're halfway there!", etc messages over your music. It works pretty well... provided you have an iPhone :)
posted by jacquilinala at 11:43 PM on March 18, 2009 [1 favorite]