After a short time, the breeze had turned from biting to refreshing and I started to appreciate how beautiful everything seemed to look - like everything had been dusted with icing sugar.

However, even with the delightful surroundings of the County Durham countryside, there is a downside to long-distance running - utter boredom.

Now, I am quite a daydreamer and, more often than not, will be in a complete world of my own, but I've discovered even my imagination has its limits.

After contemplating what to cook for Sunday dinner, where to go for my holiday this year, how to celebrate my birthday in the summer and what the plot will be for that award- winning novel I'm always saying I'm going to start writing, I find myself struggling to daydream any further and my jog starts to feel a tad tedious.

I know a lot of people recommend listening to music, but I've always been unsure of how practical it is.

I'm always worried that if I use earphones, I wouldn't hear if another runner, cyclist or horse rider was approaching from behind and wanted to get past.

As a slow jogger, I'm extremely paranoid about getting in people's way and want to avoid it at all costs.

But there's another reason for my reluctance to jog along to songs - my music collection.

However, with less than three months to go to the Virgin London Marathon, I'm determined to try anything to keep my motivation up.

When I started putting together a running playlist on my iPod (I should possibly point out that other MP3 players are available!) I became quite surprised at the variety, or lack thereof, of songs on there.

Most of the albums were rock ones - and not by respectable, up-to- date bands like the Kings of Leon or Foo Fighters. That would be fine.

Instead, I had tracks for seven albums from Def Leppard, four from Bon Jovi, two from Kiss and three from Europe. Now, I know there will be people reading this who thought Europe was a one-hit-wonder band with The Final Countdown, but no. They had many albums and my iPod has the evidence to prove it.

Whilst I've always defended my love of electronic soft rock written in the days when men had poodle perms and wore questionable leather jackets, I don't think jogging along a country lane singing to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" is quite the image I want to go for.

The only compilation album I seem to have on there is a mix of 80s pop. (For someone who was only eight when that decade ended, my music certainly seems to suggest a strong connection to it... which could also explain why I still have "A-ha" sweatbands).

Despite my doubts, there were a handful of upbeat tracks which I think might be ideal to run to, including Footloose by Kenny Loggins, Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up and the rather apt Billy Ocean hit, When The Going Gets Tough.

That said, I'm not going to get very far with just three songs to listen to, so if anyone can think of some more suggestions, please feel free to e-mail them to nicola.weatherall@ncjmedia.co.uk.