Turtles Can Run

The first time I ran a road race I was so nervous,  I wanted  to make sure I did everything right.  So I read as much as I could about racing. I  noticed that many races did not allow mp3 players and the ones that did, strongly discouraged the use of them.     One of the reasons for the ban  is insurance, rates rise substantially if race sponsors allow the use of headphones.  Another reason  is awareness, hearing other runners/ announcements and safety.

I was not happy to hear this.  Because at that point I had always run with my music.   So the thought of running a 5k without music kind of frightened me, I wasn’t sure what effect it would have on my  speed and/or spirits.

But  I decided to leave it home, because I did not want to be the only one there with one on.  Of course after arriving at the race I realized that about one third of the people there were wearing their  mp3 players, so I would have been fine.  Running without my music was a weird experience for me, I could hear everyone huffing and puffing and  I could hear my  own breathing getting harder.  Without my music I felt like I was concentrating on all the wrong things how hard my effort was, the pain, the mileage and the time gone by.  I decided I would not do that again unless forced to.

After that race,  I wore my Ipod to each subsequent race.  But  I realized was that during a race I am always going to be thinking about all of those things that I did during the first race, music or no music.  And that I was going to have to fight the battle to keep going strong in my head, the music wasn’t going to do it for me.

So I posed the question about racing with music to my twitter running friends and many of them said that they did not race with music, even if they did trained with it.   I decided to go music-less to the Zooma.  I still love listening to music during my training runs.  It helps me fight  boredom, get motivated,  set a good pace, and distract me from how hard running can  sometimes be. But as I wrote about in my Zooma Race Report,  no music  worked out very well for me.  Not only did I find someone to pace with and keep me company for most of the race, which I know would not have happened if I was wearing earphones.  I was  also able to focus on my tempo breathing and keep my effort strong throughout.    No music forced me to focus on positve thoughts and repeat mantras.   All the encouraging cheers  along the way were loud and clear  and I felt connected to the other runners.  I realized that I don’t need the music during the race,  hearing the race (as my friend Andy put it)  is part of the experience and  I believe it helped me  finish strong.

Filed under: Running Blog