Sony Ericsson Run to the Beat, London’s music half-marathon is back for the second year running this September. 12,500 runners will attempt to cover a distance of 13.1 miles, helped along the way by music blaring from 17 live stages dotted around the course. The race starts and finishes at the 02 Centre on 27th September and follows a loop through the leafy streets of Greenwich.

The theory is that the runners will match their paces to the tempo of the music, enhancing their performance at the same time as lowering their perception of effort. If the theory is correct, the runners should have a good chance of getting personal bests or, at the very least, of not feeling the burn as much as would be expected.

This has been backed up by research from sports psychologist Dr Costas Karageorghis at Brunel University in West London. His latest study in October 2008, published in the Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, revealed that music could make running a much more pleasurable experience. Thirty volunteers pounded away on treadmills, while listening to motivational rock songs from the likes of Queen and The Red Hot Chilli Peppers. Keeping their strides in time with the beat of the music had the effect of making the participants work 15% harder, and yet they felt as though they were working about 20% less hard than without music.

According to Dr Karageorghis, listening to an upbeat track floods the brain with positive thoughts, which trick it into not noticing the level of pain and fatigue the body is going through. But the effects of music go beyond the psychological. Scientific research shows that the rhythmical qualities of music can help runners enhance their technique and that running in time to music can reduce the oxygen required by the body by up to 6%. In fact, some athletes even claim that music is a legal performance enhancing drug with no side-effects. Ethiopian long distance runner, Haile Gebrselassie, is famous for smashing world records while setting his pace in time to the techno song, Scatman by Scatman John.

The music to be performed on the live stages during Run to the Beat has been carefully selected by Dr Karageorghis to keep in tune with the varying physiological and psychological demands of the runners. The music will gradually rise in tempo as the runners’ heart rates increase. So, the band on the first stage should start off with a relatively slow track for the runners to warm up to before they get in earshot of the second stage where slightly faster numbers will be playing.

Runners would do well to follow the same advice when selecting music to coordinate with their training. And it’s not just running that can improve with music; any kind of exercise could benefit. A study by American scientists in 2003 discovered that cyclists pedalled faster when the music tempo increased and research in 2006 found that team-sport players ran 400 metres faster when matching their strides to the beat of the music.

When compiling your running playlist, Dr Karageorghis’s advice is to leave the most inspirational track to last. The last song you hear will linger in your head for longer, continuing to spur you on until the next training session.

Dr Karageorghis is presently working with the International Management Group (IMG) to roll out the Run to the Beat concept across mainland Europe.