Wearing headphones during a raceDo you listen to your iPod when you are working out? If so, then I have some good news for you.

Personally, I do not use my mp3 player when I am working out because I am too worried that I would wind up dead if I buried my head in a set of headphones.

From a safety perspective, I wouldn’t even consider listening to it unless I was on a track or a treadmill, and even then I would not be loading any music up. I prefer listening to podcasts and interviews. Listening to music when you are working out can have an effect upon your levels of exertion and heart rate, and mask the actual effort that you are putting in.

That being said, a well planned queue on your iPod could potentially lead you into a good workout and I know that a lot of people swear by training with them.

PowerBar has teamed up with Lance Armstrong and Chris Carmichael to create a pair of workouts that you can listen to on your iPod while you are exercising.

Lance Armstrong is a former elite cyclist that has won the Tour de France 7 times and who has recently begun running marathons, and Chris Carmichael is his long-time coach and the owner of Carmichael Training Systems. The audio files are in MPEG 4 audio files (as opposed to WAV or MP3 files), so you will either need a player that knows how to read those files or you will need to convert the file into an mp3 using iTunes or some other audio converter.

The files are a mixture of music that has been selected to match your pace, coaching advice from Chris Carmichael as he explains what you should be doing at each point in the workout, and tips from Lance Armstrong that he has picked up from his years as an elite cyclist and his transition into retirement and then marathon running.

I’ve listened to the first 10 minutes or so of each of the workouts, and they don’t really impress me very much. The music is not really my thing, and I would not actually use them while working out. It is a bit humorous listening to Lance push the PowerBar gel packs, especially after having listened to stories that Joannie shared a few weeks ago about pacing him through the end of the race.

If you do run with your head buried behind some music, though, then you might want to take a look at these. They are “free” for the moment. I do not know if they plan on eventually selling them or not, but until December 12th the only cost is your email address. You can read about the audio workouts at PowerBar, or go straight to the sign up page at Carmichael Training Systems.

(Thanks to Jeff for the heads up.)