THE PUMP
Hold a cadence. The lamp gives you the beat, then goes dark and you keep it alone — which is exactly what happens to every runner on every long road.
What this machine is actually teaching
Beats per minute is just counting: how many times something repeats in sixty seconds. 180 BPM means a beat every third of a second, and it happens to be close to the cadence a lot of efficient runners settle into.
Keeping a beat after the sound stops is harder than keeping it with the sound, because you are no longer reacting — you are predicting. The drift number shows whether you speed up or slow down when nobody is counting for you. Almost everyone drifts one way consistently.
Musicians train this. So do runners, rowers and cyclists, because pace is rhythm and rhythm is the difference between finishing strong and blowing up at mile twenty.