I've never used headphones while running, and seeing as races are starting a trend of actually enforcing their rules of headphone prohibition, that was probably a habit that was good for me to never have really picked up. Although, it's not like I'm fast enough for that to really matter......
Anyway, I found this story in the NY Times to be interesting, regarding the dissociation strategies runners have used during either training or races. While running one race, which I thought was the loneliest 5K possible in DC, last year, I got Johnny Cash's "Walk the Line" stuck in my head. In preparation for a 10K, I came up with the mantra "Power through the legs, strong through the core." I can't remember if I actually used the mantra. During another 10K, all I could think during the last 1.5 miles was that if I ran faster, I could get off the dang Whitehurst Freeway, whose light gray surface was reflecting the sweltering sun in all of the freeway's albedo glory. Wow. I got to write the word "albedo."
