There’s ample evidence to make a solid case for running while listening to music. Not surprisingly, music has been shown to serve as a motivator during exercise. It also provides a distraction from minor discomfort, fatigue and boredom.

When I first started running, I had to have music. It was a matter of necessity because I ran on a treadmill. Doing time on a treadmill was fairly mind-numbing — without music the activity felt nothing short of torturous.

It wasn’t until I joined a running group that I started heading outside for my runs. Try as might, I couldn’t get past the four mile mark on the treadmill. Looking back, I now know exactly why I couldn’t. It wasn’t because I was physically incapable — it was because I was bored. At the time going anything beyond four miles presented a psychological barrier. And I hoped that joining a running group would help me overcome it. It did.

I quickly aligned myself with the lollygaggers. We were the ones at the back of the pack laughing and gossiping and holding up our coaches from being able to take down the water stops they’d placed along the day’s route. On many of those pre-dawn Saturday mornings the running itself became secondary. Much of my running motivation in those days was kept afire by the promise of brunch and coffees after (in particular, a short stack of banana granola pancakes provided incentive enough to complete a long run).

Managing to run without headphones when running in a group was easy. Good conversation is a great distraction, and at the time running with what was to become a tight knit group was probably the one thing that had the biggest influence in  helping me to meet my weekly mileage goals. On the shorter runs — the ones I ran alone — I continued to listen to music as a matter of unquestionable habit.

My new found running friends and I trained together for what was to be the first of many half marathons. We plodded together through an entire season of training — our pace rarely quickening beyond the deliberate, but our enjoyment in and devotion to the activity was unfailing. This routine remained unaltered until the day of the race. We planned to gather early, pose for a couple of pre-race photos and run the course together. Staying in a separate hotel across town, I was the only one who didn’t car pool to the starting line that day. And, consequently, I was the only one who arrived on time. My friends were so late in arriving, in fact, that I was forced to start alone.

Photo by Rainbeaux

That was my first experience running without distractions — no conversation, no music. And I was amazed at how quickly the time passed. I fell easily into a natural rhythm thanks to the sound of thousands of feet pounding the pavement in unison all around me. My experience running that day was a breakthrough.

And, much to my own surprise, I finished the race 40 minutes ahead of my friends.

Since then I haven’t had the slighted trouble running without music. In fact, I’ve developed — generally speaking — a preference for going without. Which brings me to my main point — that is, sometimes there are just days when I really need to pair a particular run with music. Most of the time I don’t. But, sometimes I just feel like it, and so I go with the urge. Other times I’ll listen to an audiobook. (While listening to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for instance, the average length of my daily outings increased). Or a podcast (I get pretty picky about the content though, and find news or anything too heady distracting).

I’ve read the headlines stating that music can boost performance and stamina. And, (with very nearly) all kidding aside, it makes sense in an Eye of the Tiger kind of way. There is a reason, after all, why that particular song and movie resonated enough to firmly cement themselves into the collective memory of aerobicisers everywhere. Quite simply, it can be inspiring to listen to music while exercising.

But, in the long term when you’re committed to activity like running, there is a risk that the rituals that surround and support the act can become habitual — and eventually boring.

In other words, sometimes listening to music helps break up the routine. But more often listening to music can be the routine.

And sometimes it helps to turn it off.

At one time (going on several years ago, I might add) I thought that running was for the birds. I suspected that in the human genome there existed a special trait that made strenuous activity fun.

And I lacked it.

This opinion had evolved slowly over a number of years, but its roots began with a painfully bad experience — that is, my first foray into running. In high school, I had taken up running for mostly superficial reasons — that is to say, I was a teenager and wanted to be sun-kissed and lithe.

As ashamed as I am now to admit it, I was more concerned with looking healthy rather than actually being healthy. It was a psychologically low time in which tanning beds and Slim Fast figured prominently. I remember friends of mine — who participated in cross country — suggesting that I take up smoking because it helped curb hunger pains. Although I was stupid enough to give smoking a try, after a few cigarettes my wheezing asthmatic lungs informed me that the stint was over and I had better pursue another tactic.

And that’s when I started running.

My father — a man who smoked his first cigarette at age 11 and consequently had a large swath of his lower left lung surgically removed due to benign tumorous growths — blew out a stream of smoke (tilted conscientiously upward, as has always been his habit), and dispensed with what amounted to the first bit in a series of bad advice that I was to encounter on how to go about running. He told me to kick my knees up high.

And it is at this point where I feel compelled to share a quick aside on the topic of my father.

He’s a man who, incidentally, had been a high school track star of sorts. I know this not because of a childhood spent listening to him reminisce about the good old days. It’s from others that I’ve caught glimpses of this former life. One thing I genuinely admire about him is his modesty — my father is not a braggart, by any stretch of the imagination — but, possessing this virtue also means that (to my mind, at least) it has left him shrouded in mystery. Even today — although we have a relationship completely devoid of the tension brought on by my angsty adolescence – I am keenly aware of the fact that there is a great deal about my father that I still do not know.

So, in some respects, it was my father — whose running reputation was built upon his status as the fastest sprinter in a relay team, the “anchor” — that I was trying to emulate when I started running. (That, and as I mentioned before – with Memorial Day and the opening of the local pools approaching — I had rather regrettable shallow ulterior motives as well).

The advice my father gave me was spot on — for someone running the hundred-meter dash. Not for a dilettante such as myself, who had firmly decided to kick things off by running three miles a day, 5 days a week. (This, after having never shown much interest in athletics or exercise.)

I would be surprised if on that first day out I lasted even five minutes.

I stuck with it doggishly though. Despite debilitating muscle soreness that left me with an awkwardly stiff gait (when running or walking), I continued to put in my time each day. I made a lot of mistakes and paid for it by feeling wretched approximately 100% of the time. I refused to eat properly (or at all), and developed insane cravings which would lead to shameful binges consisting of several heaping platefuls of spaghetti or an entire half gallon of Neapolitan.

But — perhaps worst of all — I developed shin splints.

Not surprisingly, sometime around my senior year of high school I stopped exercising, entirely and defiantly. I equated physical activity with pain and exhaustion, and in the years to come whenever anyone brought up doing anything that remotely resembled exercise (e.g., cycling a few blocks to get ice cream), I resisted. With respect to exercise, I deflected by enthusiastically borrowing the Woody Allen line “I prefer to atrophy”.

This attitude shaped my behavior for the better part of the following decade. Then, in my middle 20’s things changed. Mostly, I had become unpleasantly preoccupied with the realization that someone so young (namely, myself) should feel so very unhealthy.

My approach towards running was one of moderation (by sprinkling at odd intervals five or ten minutes of light jogging into my walking routine), and — most notably — my motives were entirely different. Taking things slow, exercise left me feeling energized, not exhausted and irritable. And, I wanted to be healthy.

This new approach — it worked. It wasn’t until I’d been running for a couple of years already that I began to entertain the idea of running a half marathon. Eventually, I worked my way up to the marathon distance. But building up to that too was a deliciously gradual act.

My attitude towards running — and, more importantly, my own health in general — changed several years ago.

And now when I run, I savor it.