Fast Running Blog

(From Salt Lake Running Co.)
"We just wanted to let everyone know that the rules about having headphones while running a USATF sanctioned race have changed. Before, no headphones were allowed to insure that athletes were not being aided with pacing and split information. The rule has been amended to ALLOW headphones during road racing events except for those competing in a National Championship event."

Not that anyone listened, but I did!!!  Now we are all free to run with our music again (and our secret pacing coaches, yeah right!!!!)

If one is crafty with their Ipod construction, they can select song lengths to complete in tandums to give mile splits. Such as if I wanted to run a 7:00 mile, I could select 2 songs that were 3:32 and 3:28. But then, a watch does that so much more efficiently, lol! Of course, Nike puts out an idod nano attachment that goes into the shoe that will give you detailed pace information, but then again, so does a garmin. It all makes no sense to me. The only thing about the headphones that makes sense to me is that using them cuts down on your ability to hear what's going on around you, thus making it a safety issue. I run every workout with an ipod shuffle, but never race with headphones. Either way their ruling has no bearing on me, but I do find it humerous that their rationale has to do with pacing information. If that is truly their feeling, then watches and garmins should be outlawed much more quickly than headphones. Incidentally, are watches outlawed in National Championship events?

Good, now I can listen to NPR podcasts during races. Prairie Home Companion always gets me fired up.

Sweet now I can get another picture of jumping across the finish line at STGM with some big, beefy headphone on!

Jeff - didn't you do that experiment in physics in high school where they had you time the ticker tape based off of how long a song lasted to see what the velocity was?

I for one do enjoy my music when running. With the St. George Marathon this fall being my first marathon I decided to run it without music. Actually it was probably better to not have the music on that race with the bad wet, cold weather we had. I had trained all summer with music and then a week or so before the marathon I decided to do things by the rules.
I personally had a hard time understanding the atvantage that someone mught have with listening to music, especially when it is a receration run for 99.9% of the runners. When it gets to championship type races by all means there should not be music, but then again why would they need it, they are not out running for many hours.

What is really stupid about this rule is that they extend it to trail ultras, even the 100-mile championship.

I guess I don't have to worry about the headphone police tracking me down now.  I did get a warning last year at Hobble Creek.  I usually train and race with headphones, but I also try to be cautious of those runners around me.

I wore headphones in a race once.  Looking back, it was probably one of the stupider things I've done.  It was my 12 mile man against horse race.  Luckily the power of Tesla protected me from getting trampled.

I definitely like having on headphones for Ultras - at least after the point that I start getting tired.