For several years now, most of my music listening is done either from my iPod (particularly commuting to work on the bus, and when running), or through iTunes when I’m at my desk.

About 18 months ago I decided to rate all the music sitting in these systems — and I’m still not finished. But I’m getting close to the end, and am starting to enjoy some of the benefits. I thought I’d explain what they are, in case others can benefit too.

One of the problems with piles of CDs is that it can be difficult to get round to listening to most of them. Hunting through the racks, unless you’re very organised, can be a time-consuming and frustrating experience. (And probably impossible if they’re in piles spread around the house …) Having them all copied over to a PC can make it easier to find them quickly, and browse through the collection.

But what if you could just ask to hear some great music that you’ve not listened to for a while? Sounds like a perfect job for a computer, with its perfect memory. And iTunes can indeed do this … if you tell it what you like. And thanks to Apple it’s easy. Rate a song from 1 to 5 stars in iTunes or an iPods, and then you can use that in a ‘Smart Playlist’ that updates itself whenever you make or change a rating. So, I have an “Unrated” playlist that selects a random hour-long selection. This is what it looks like:

The first line selects those less than 1 star – ie, those not rated. The second knocks out some long radio recordings that I’m not interested in rating, as I only listen to them once. The third line ignores Classical music, which doesn’t work very being rated track-by-track. The fourth line only gives me music, not video or podcasts, neither of which I want to play multiple times. The 250MB selected at random could easily have been 1 hour selected at random.

So, that gives me a playlist I use when I’m on the bus, rating on average 30 minutes of music a day.

Then the fun begins. Create a “My Top Rated Least Played” smart playlist that looks like this:

And, bingo, 3 hours of the music I like the most, but have listened to least recently. Great for when I’m returning from work and am too tired to read a book, or rate music, and instead just want to relax and enjoy some great music. Result!

(In this case, the playlist is selecting anything more than 4 stars, but you can pick what you like. You might be wondering why I don’t just pick the tracks with 5 stars? It’s because I’ve turned on some little-known features of iTunes that let me rate in half stars, and/or on a scale of 1-100. So I have quite a few that are about 4.5 stars. This is beyond most people’s need for detail!)

Hmm. There are 3 different 10k races close by in late September and early October. I don’t have the energy or commitment to do more than one. So, should it be Cirencester, Cricklade or Cheltenham?

Whichever, I do need to manage rather more miles a week. But at least I clocked up 100 running miles, since I started running again a year and a half ago.

I was interested to see how consistent I’ve been in time and distance, so I have learned a bit of the R statistics package. And here’s the result:

And here’s a little graph of which length runs I do most often …

Quite neat.

Back after another week staying in Annapolis.

Good finds: City Dock coffee have another shop down off State Circle, with bucket chairs and even a very comfy settee in the window. But sans wifi. Free wifi outside Duklaw’s at Arundel Mills, where we had very tasty Buffalo Chicken snacks. Five Guys are also great.

Poor choices: the Middleton Tavern by the bay with the outside fixed seats had only so-so food, and slow service. The in-house Starbucks wasn’t worth it, but their Maxwell House coffee + Vanilla milk was the much cheaper and more satisfying choice.

Despite it being two months ago, I feel I should post my thoughts on my first 10k race. The Evesham Vale 10k was (in my non-existent experience) well organised, and as I hoped good for a first-timer.

Before and at the start it was drizzling persistently, which made me nervous: was it going to rain throughout? But after a few km it had stopped, and the sun had come out by the finish, which was great for the celebrations.

There was much nervous milling around on the side roads of the town, with some apparently wasting energy by sprinting up an down. At 10:25 the High St was shut and we all then gathered by our respective speed groups. I was planning to beat 65 minutes, so it was discouraging to find the slowest time group was simply the “over 55 mins”. But I was from alone, and I landed up next to another first-timer — which was good until I realised she was wearing Lycra and surely was more serious about it all. It was curiously quiet waiting for the start, standing ten abreast, with a few brief sentences to be polite and ease tension. Then the signal to start and 700 of us began to jog an then run, now with only the sound of breath and footsteps.

My first mistake came at about 1km, when we ran past some tables with water bottles set out. I was a bit surprised, but grabbed one anyway, only a few seconds later realising that they were supposed to be for collection when we passed back the other way in about 4km time. I’d not run with a bottle before, and it wasn’t easy to hold or use. It stopped my thirst but it could have lost me some energy. Daft as I’d just bought an easy-to-hold runners bottle, but heeded advice not to use it for the first time in a race.

My other mistake was not having a basic watch on. I’m used to getting pace and distance info from my iPod, but headphones being banned that option was out. (Though a few flouted that rule.) So I was not sure what my time was until almost the end, when I heard the announcer urge finishers some distance in front of me to “sprint to beat the hour”. Despite finding km 8-9 hard work, I probably could have come in just under 60 mins if I’d pushed. I was still very pleased with my sub 10-minute mile average, and that I did it without stopping.

Will I do another one, or longer distances? I might manage a half marathon (about 20km) but at the moment I think I’d find the training just too dull. I get bored after about 40 mins even with interesting music an podcasts …

Perhaps the next challenge is to get Martha to join me. She used to be a very fast cross-country runner at school …