Listen, I’m sorry. I know you like listening to tunes while you run, so you’re not going to be happy with this rule. You think you need the music to distract and entertain you while you run. You can’t imagine going 30 minutes without the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen or your favorite group that I’ve never heard of.
And I’m willing to lighten up on this dictum eventually. Maybe in a few months when you’re running more confidently and relaxed. Maybe when you’re running on a treadmill or a well-traveled route. Maybe when you’re trying to extend your run to an hour or more.
But not now—not when you are just starting out. Now you should be listening to your environment, your body, and all the other sounds around you. First and foremost, listen for cars, cyclists, pedestrians, and everything else that could affect your safety. That’s the most important rule of running: safety first.
Headphones don’t just funnel sounds to your ears. They also diminish your attention to other input—sensory data brimming with valuable information important to runners.
For example, your breathing warns you if you are running too fast. The sweat on your brow signals possible dehydration. When your ears and mind drift too deep into the audio zone, you might react more slowly to the bicyclist speeding your way. Or the crack in the sidewalk. Or the pothole in the road.
You’ll also miss the richness of sounds in the natural world around you. I’m thinking here about such miracles as crickets, birds, the frogs of spring, the honking, southward-seeking geese of fall and winter, the crunch of soft snow, the rustling leaves, the wind whistling through treetops, the lashing rain when a sudden storm catches you by surprise, a friend’s wistful tale of her adoption, your child’s complaints about a teacher, the voice in your own head hoping for more peace, prosperity, and understanding across the globe.
And these are just the smallest percentage of what you’ll encounter on the road. I’ve experienced all of them. You will too. And many more—especially the ones most germane to your own life and world.
Boost your creativity: Hundreds of authors, musicians, and artists have attested to the creativity they gain from their regular running routines. Prolific novelist and short-story writer Joyce Carol Oates once wrote about this for the New York Times. She began her essay like this: “Running! If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think what it might be.”
Acclaimed Japanese author Haruki Murakami wrote a book titled What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. Quite a bit, it turns out. Many of his ideas come to him spontaneously. “I usually run with my mind empty,” he told Runner’s World. “However, when I run empty-minded, something naturally and abruptly crawls in sometime.”
This is one of the things I most enjoy about running. I never know what’s going to come to me. Running often delivers surprising insights.
Start a conversation: When runners get together, whether just two at a time or many, the conversation seems to flow with unusual ease. A psychologist friend of mine has suggested we feel freer and less inhibited when we run. Something loosens within us.
Another theory holds that it’s easier to talk about things when you aren’t looking into someone’s eyes. We run side by side, eyes glued ahead. No one’s staring at anyone else the way we do across a dinner table or living room.
I know only this. The most serious discussions I have ever had, and the most honest—about love, death, miscarriage, children, divorce, financial fears, and the like—have occurred when I was running with a friend. Open up. It’s good for everyone.
Unplug and chill out: Every runner recognizes that regular workouts reduce stress. If we miss three or four days in a row, we begin to feel antsy and anxious. A 2013 paper in Frontiers in Psychology found the same. How does exercise reduce stress?
The paper’s authors could not pinpoint one key pathway. There were many. “No single mechanism sufficiently accounts” for the effect. Nonetheless, “Physical activity positively impacts a number of biological, as well as psychological, mechanisms.”
Whatever the precise scientific explanation, we know the simple truth. We live in a 24-7 world that seems to spin faster every day. Running offers a blessed time-out. We can unplug and chill out. What’s not to like about that?