The iPod Has Ruined Running

Running is a strange sport.  In some ways it's an individual sport.  All it takes is for a person to head out the door and run.  But, running is very much a community sport.  There's this deep bond between people who run.  Some run fast.  Some run slow.  Yet we have this connection that transcends speed and distance.  It's hard to explain, yes, but running as a sport wouldn't exist without it.

I get the need for "alone time" while running.  Some of my best runs happen when I'm the only person at the track, hours before the sun rises.  Just me, the track, and the sound of my feet striking the ground.  I get that.  I understand running for miles and miles on your own—through the woods, down the beach, around the neighborhood.  I get that.

This morning was not one of those mornings for me.  I had some extra time, so I drove to the lakes and put 10 miles in going around Calhoun, Harriet, and Lake of the Isles.  If you've never ran at the lakes on a Saturday morning, know that it is THE place to run.  On a Saturday in the summer, the trails are so crowded that it's tough to pass people.  Today, it wasn't quite that crowded, but in my hour and a half of running, I passed hundreds of runners.

And 95% of them had music players in their ears.

Never have I run with so many people, yet felt so alone.

I wore my 2010 marathon shirt, and each time I would see someone wearing the same shirt (at least 5 or 6 other people), I wanted to say to them "Nice shirt!" or something that exemplifies this connection that we, as runners, share.  But I didn't say anything because they were in their own, electronically enhance world.  Too absorbed to even make eye contact.  No desire to offer a wave, or a smile.  Nothing.  Alone.

I ran with an iPod for a while last year, but hated it.  It wasn't that the music messed up my pace—which it did.  It wasn't that it was a hassle to always worry about the iPod—though that was part of it.  It's that I couldn't stand being isolated from the very sport that I love.  I hated not hearing the sounds of traffic.  I hated not noticing the birds, or the planes overhead.  I hated that I was running outside, but could have just as easily been on a treadmill, and the experience would have been the same.

It happened in the marathon, too.  I would see something funny or exciting, and when I made a comment about it to the people around me, no one responded.  No one even heard me.

I can't change this.  It's a reality that as more and more people take up this great sport, more and more people will do it with music players.  I think that's sad.  But, I guess I have to get used to running—while undergoing phenomenal growth—becoming a more individual sport than it ever has been.