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November 01, 2007
Whatever, yo
[Pic]
There's a most interesting article in the New York Times today about a new trend in races: banning headphones:
At the peak of the marathon season, with one of the year’s biggest races set for Sunday in New York, a worry has emerged among some runners, and it has nothing to do with hitting the wall at Mile 20: Will Beyoncé be there to push them to the finish? Will they be able to call upon Bon Jovi for support when there is no one else to turn to?
USA Track & Field, the national governing body for running, this year banned the use of headphones and portable audio players like iPods at its official races. The new rule was created to ensure safety and to prevent runners from having a competitive edge.
But trying to enforce such a rule on a 26.2-mile course filled with thousands of runners may be futile. The New York City Marathon, which strongly discourages the use of audio players, will not attempt to police its field on Sunday for lack of a surefire way to carry out the ban.
Technically, at last weekend’s Marine Corps Marathon here, and even at much smaller events like the Creaky Bones 5-kilometer race in Florida and the Corn Maze 4-miler in Tennessee, runners should not have had the luxury of listening to their favorite songs along the way. Marine Corps Marathon officials threatened to disqualify runners using headphones, but did not follow through.
This strikes me as absurd. Yes, it's a safety issue, but in a race like a marathon, I don't think it matters whether you have headphones or not. People who are running a marathon are singurlarly focused on themselves, and they won't notice their surroundings one way or another. Even more, it's a matter of conscience: unless you realize there's other people around, you won't bother to look. So many people cause accidents on the lake path here because they aren't conscientious about their surroundings. An iPod ban won't change that.
Personally, I don't like to run races listening to my iPod. When I go out for running, I take my iPod, mostly to relieve boredom. But in a race, it's hard to get bored. Running with a group of people, running against them, is all I need to get to the end. Admittedly, the longest race I've done recently is an 8k, but even when I ran the Chicago and Cleveland Marathons, I wasn't thinking some tunes would really get me through the race.
There's also a group of competitive runners who think "recreational" runners shouldn't be running races. That's all absurd and overly idealistic. I ran a 5k a few weeks ago, and I probably lost a good 20 seconds off my race time because the trail was jammed with slow runners. There's no way I'm ever going to win a race, but I definitely pride myself on improving my times and finishing the race as fast as I can. I didn't care, though. I said to myself, they paid the $20 fee like me, and even if they're running slowly, at least they are exercising. That's why running is such a great sport: it's probably the only one where the average schlub is in the same event as a world-class athlete.
However, as I always say, if music is what you need to run a race, go for it. Personally, I am 100% with the people who say the atmosphere is what is special about running a race. No matter what, you can't get the atmosphere with Bad Medicine blasting in your ears. It's fine for lonely runs along the lake, but when I have 5,000 other people around me, I'll take the ambiance.
entry no. 995
Posted by oz115 at November 1, 2007 09:54 PM