4th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Music is a part of almost everyone’s lifestyle, especially athletes. Many people choose to work out while listening to music, which has been proven to improve exercise performance. The purpose of this study was to measure how music effects running pace, RPE and heart rate in recreational aerobic runners during a one mile run. We hypothesized that when compared to no music, the more beats per minute in music will positively affect the subject’s running performance. The subjects for this study were ten male and ten female physically active Campbell University students between the ages of 18-25. The one mile run was tested under three separate conditions; no music, slow tempo music (90 bpm), and fast tempo music (180 bpm). On three alternating days over the course of a week, the subjects were tested by running a mile on an outdoor track while under one of the three music conditions. The subjects were provided with an Ipod and headphones to listen to the slow and fast tempo music. After each run was completed, the subjects’ time, heart rate, and RPE were recorded by the researchers. Using SPSS, our data was run through an ANOVA test. In contrast to our hypothesis, there was no significance found between music tempo, time, heart rate, RPE and running pace during a one mile run.