Can rock music make you run faster?

It's my first half-marathon, and I'm willing to buy into anything that might get me round those 13.1 miles. OK, not the Borat mankini costumes some of my fellow runners were sporting, but I was open to pretty much anything else that would speed the pace and dull the pain.

So, when I heard that London's first half-marathon was going to be a musical one, with 16 live bands along the route playing scientifically selected tracks that would "lift performance to new levels", I knew I'd found my race. I'd also be able to silence the friends who'd been teasing me ever since I let slip that The Human League and Elton John topped my training playlist. My taste in music could no longer be questioned if I had science on my side. And that's how, on Sunday, I found myself taking part in Run To The Beat.

The race was the brainchild of Costas Karageorghis, a sports psychologist at Brunel University. His latest research, due to be published in the US Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, found that when listening to tracks from Madonna to the Red Hot Chili Peppers, most runners found the exercise more pleasurable than usual, even those on the verge of collapsing on the treadmill. In general, they ran further and for longer; some found that their endurance levels were increased by more than 15 per cent.

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This was promising. I wanted to know more. How did music work such minor miracles? "Think of music as a legal drug," Karageorghis explained before the race. "It reduces the perception of effort by blocking fatigue-related messages to the brain. It elevates positive aspects of mood, like vigour and excitement, and reduces negative aspects, like depression, and this creates the right sporting mindset."

One niggling question; does it work for everyone? (Translation: will it work for me?) Well, it works for the great Haile Gebrselassie, famed for clocking ever-faster times by training to "Scatman", the 1994 dance smash. Two weeks ago, the Ethiopian runner broke the marathon world record in Berlin. Other Olympians, it seems, prefer to listen to their own bodies; two-time decathlon champion Daley Thompson once said music was anathema as he was so focused on what he was doing.

So the sporting elite offers a mixed bag of evidence. Still, amateur runners are likely to get a significant boost while running to music, Karageorghis says.

The key to compiling your ultimate running playlist is to start with slower songs, so you don't head off too fast, and gradually raise the tempo with special booster-songs for the points – like hills – when you may "hit the wall". In the first three miles of a half marathon, the sports doctor recommends tracks like Rose Royce's "Car Wash", building up to James Brown's "I Feel Good" for the second quarter. After halfway, Irena Cara's "Fame" not only ups the pace but includes feel-good lyrics ("I wanna live for ever"), and in the killer last three miles, songs like the Van Morrison classic "Brown-Eyed Girl" should ensure that you make it through.

The Run To The Beat organisers had collected data from the 12,000-plus competitors on everything from age to musical preferences and best times. Karageorghis reckons that if there's a 2 per cent overall improvement in times, it'll be down to the music. "I've had the opportunity to test all the scientific principles in the lab," he says. "Now it's about looking at real-life people in a real-life situation."

Unfortunately, real life is a less predictable. Sunday brought torrential rain and a suspension of the Jubilee Line that was supposed to get people to the start at the O2 dome. And the chaos meant that some bands didn't make it to their designated spots on the route, and those that did battled rain-induced hitches.

The Royal Artillery Band, meant to inspire runners during the warm-up with a medley of tunes from James Bond to Star Wars, were nowhere to be seen. The ska-rap-rock combo Imperial Leisure did make it to the main stage by the starting line, which was lucky, given that their opening riff was replacing the traditional starting gun. However, the jumping up and down my running mate Mindy and I began to do at this point may well have been a reaction to standing in the pouring rain for half an hour.

It has to be said that some of the music really did lift my spirits and spur me on at various points around the course. The blues band playing against the splendid backdrop of the Woolwich Arsenal was fantastic, and when I caught the refrain of "Everybody Dance Now" at the Mile 12 marker, I definitely started to speed up. But, even at my sedate 10-minute-mile pace, you're not next to the speakers for long, so the performance-enhancing musical injections rarely lasted more than 30 seconds.

Like many runners, I'd left my iPod at home and so the onus was on the crowds of rain-braving spectators to fill the gaps. I'd like to thank the elderly lady who'd moved a speaker to her first-floor window and treated runners to a burst of Motown; and the man with the ghetto blaster wrapped in a plastic sheet pumping out "Eye of the Tiger" on a street corner as his small son played along on his inflatable guitar.

Mindy and I finished in a respectable 2hr 4min 1sec. Not much to choose between us and Gebrselassie's world-record run (2hr 3min 59sec), except that we were running half the distance. Time to dig out that Scatman song, I think. Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop.

Feel the power: Claire's playlist

Human League: Together in Electric Dreams

Bran Van 3000: Astounded

Elton John: I'm Still Standing

REM vs Basement Jaxx: Losing My Head

Franz Ferdinand: Take Me Out

Black Eyed Peas: Shut Up

Dimitri From Paris: Outro Lugar

Bonnie Tyler: Holding Out for a Hero

Estelle: American Boy

The Cure: Friday I'm In Love

Carlos Oliva: Tu Carrito

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