Headphones?
Or no headphones?
When I set out last week to write a piece on running with headphones versus no headphones, my stance was always going to be (as a convert), to find a reason toward no headphones. That was until this weekend past.
As a brief background, I’ve always run. I enjoy it, I like the fact that if I want to get out I can. The longest I’ve run to date is 30K or 18.64 miles. Up until a couple of years ago, I was a big proponent of music while running, listening to extended mixes by DJs such as Sasha and Max Graham. However it was chatting to my brother and then getting a dog, that I started to drift off the music. Primarily due to the dog if I’m honest, as I needed (and still do) to keep aware of where he is and when. As it happens I’ve come to enjoy it, especially living in the countryside as we do, hearing the tread on gravel, the birds tweeting etc I find it quite cathartic and easy to get lost in the run, and by that, being at one with nature….
All that said however, along with a group of friends met on Instagram, I participated in a 100 mile ultra marathon relay this weekend past, each of us running 16.8 miles (2 miles shy of my current distance record - which I did 10 years younger). We were all in different parts of the country running at set times, so our distance was run on our own, unaided. I set off headphone-less, and was quite happy for it, 8 miles in however, and the sound of the camelbak on my back sloshing about, while initially rhythmic, got really annoying and at times disheartening, especially when my running didn’t feel in time with it. So, I donned the headphones that I’d taken along, (no lie, with a view to writing this up)…
At that 8 mile point, after having my energy gel and with the headphones in, it gave me the gust of wind that I needed at the time. My only criticism was that the mix I chose had more mellow tunes on it than I recalled, and they didn’t help, but otherwise running with music was a help than the hinderance I was expecting to argue. Those tunes that where upbeat and motivational really kicked in nicely and I forgot about the burning sensation on the souls of my feet for a while. It was only at the Avebury Stone Circle that the headphones had to come out due to some weird interference (for another post I am sure), before going right back in once I was through.
I think off the back of that run (having not run a decent distance in such a while), that my view has adapted to being more in line with, running long distance; headphones, shorter training runs; perhaps not. Obviously this piece was never going to break the internet in its topicality, but more spurns my nosey curiosity in what people prefer when running… Which leads nicely into the below part:
Before writing this piece and actually before signing up to the #lockdownleg, I put a couple of questions onto instagram stories and these are the responses I got in return:
The questions where: “What do you think about when running? Or do you listen to music?” and “What music do you listen to?’
I only had a few responses, but all where quite interesting, the majority clearly favour listening to music, what I found interesting is the listening to podcasts while running. I personally listen to podcasts on the train or in the car when I can concentrate a little more, while running I think I would find that rather hard. The other fascinating response was a chap who had just finished 100 marathons in 100 days… Listening to white noise on one or some of those days, when I guess your body was in quite a physical space, I guess the best thing to listen to was noise just to air out the aches and pains.
My conclusion to this ‘fun’ post is that for me, I quite like, on shorter runs, to have just the natural noises and being at one with my thoughts; what’s on for today, what matters do I need to attend to, what blog posts do I want to write, why does my dog love poo so much and so on. Though on longer runs as you’re pushing your body harder, having the music to hand is, and was, welcome relief. I could of course delve more into the science of running with headphones versus not, and there are articles that have been written by people far more learned than me, but this was more about how others run than whether you should or shouldn’t listen to music, podcasts or not. I may revisit this again, but for now, run well, run hard and enjoy the tunes.