Taking the headphones off

I lean hard into the highway’s thick white line as it wraps itself about my torso, tugging my flagging puppet’s frame through the wind on its tarmac travelator.

Toenails rattling at the ends of my plodding, swollen feet as I gag on the fluids necessary to stave off the cramps locking up my calves. Heart rate climbing and cadence plummeting, like two planes duelling in some perilous aerobatic manoeuvre.

The second hand of a metronomic grandfather clock strokes steady in the sky, syncing with my clingfilm-clad lungs, truncating strides and frustrated arms.

The shape of it shifts race on race but in today’s marathon, the accumulation of these physical obstructions form the imposing silhouette of Anxiety’s Wall. The only way through is to find peace in the understanding, the singular focus, that this wall shall fall before I do.

Ten kilometres to go.

In the few days before this marathon though, as with all the marathons I’ve run thus far, I am coiled up python-like and the hissing in my mind will not relent.

Daily trips to the chemist to remedy a turbulent stomach or a tickly throat; curious twinges resulting in $80 physio visits; weather reports refreshed hourly; lists upon lists transferred to sports tape all up my wrists for race day and, pitifully, entire conversations had without hearing, as my heavy right foot twitches idle and irritable on a full tank of fuel. This is the overthinker’s leadup; the anxious person’s marathoning plight.

Friends ask about this strange mania, the fanatical dieting and training plans – all polite enquiries I self-consciously address with cursory overviews, but the major query is almost always whether or not I listen to music while running.

Certainly in my first two decades of running, doing it without music seemed analogous to travelling without money or going out without drinking – doable but needlessly difficult and ultimately unenjoyable.

But it becomes apparent early on during marathon training that the end of very long runs are rather like the end of very long nights out, in that artistic merit counts for little when your eyes are rolled to the back of your head and you just want to go home. There is not a lyric in existence clever enough for me to give a shit about when my calves turn to crumbling marble.

Be it a long intro, a slow tempo, a strange time signature, a stride-sapping breakdown or some unfulfilling lo-fi-ness in the recording - a lot of songs just don’t work for running. But if it’s got a solid beat, crisp production and doesn’t do anything distracting, it works for me. Turbo trash.

In the last ten kilometres of an actual marathon though, there is simply no suitable music. I did try it twice but no song felt right.

Having since forsaken headphones completely during races, I now know why no song works like it ought to in the last quarter of a marathon.

The act of wearing headphones is one of introversion; of looking inwards. You shut your ears off to the world and ask that instead, the music dictate mood and energy.

This triggering can be impactfully intense during training runs, enabling surges of motivation that sees the music tapping into your energy stores like a bucket descending into a well and hauling up revitalising fresh water.

However, when the energy stores in this well are so depleted at the end of a marathon, they must be so carefully dispensed that the moody undulations of music can be at best fruitless and at worst, compromising.

When your go-to song is lowered down there to salvage some bucket of motivation, it will haul up virtually nothing and this unproductive dredging will only serve to deplete you further.

In such situations, one is far better served by looking outside of oneself with the headphones off, to find a timeless, simple melody, buried deep in the rubble of the race.

Five hundred meters to go.

Flanked by two runners with whom I’ve had little exchanges of encouragement over the last two hours and 50-something minutes, one taps me on the shoulder and we collectively decide to lift the pace.

I refocus on the white line of the road ahead and the tick-tock mechanics of my lungs and my limbs.

“Finishing strong, fellas! Amazing effort!”

“Great pace boys – sprint it out – go go go!”

I don’t usually take well to compliments but I know these words from earnest bystander strangers to be true, that they mean it. I fire them a big thank you thumbs up.

My spirit feels instantaneously lighter, a much less transient relief than my previous marathon’s final kilometre - blasted by a Metallica riff that couldn’t dredge up any of the required rage.

A crowd of several hundred people line the finishing straight and the noise is cacophonous and pure in its positivity and has me feeling like a star.

“Another group of marathoners coming through now,” the announcer calls through the PA, “and in just under three hours! Incredible work!”

Never have I felt more connected to the space around me, to a community of strangers, or to the sensory capacities of my body. Never have I felt more present in a single experience, necessarily so, than during the closing stages of this marathon.

In the peaceful triumph of this moment and my absolute immersion in it, it’s abundantly clear to me how much one can gain both in marathoning as in life, by just taking the headphones off.