There was a time when running races were peaceful. A bit of pre-race banter. The distant rustle of bibs being pinned on last minute. Maybe the odd runner doing warm-up drills that looked more like interpretive dance. And then silence. Just you, your feet, your thoughts, and maybe the odd wheeze from the lad who went out way too hard in mile one.
But not anymore.
We are now entering a new era. An era of gobshites who have decided to play music from their phone speakers.
At the Féile an Phobail 5K yesterday, I witnessed it. A man, fully grown and allegedly in control of his faculties, decided to run the entire race with his phone strapped to his arm, blaring electronic music out loud like a one-man junior disco on the move.
Now, to be clear, earphones are banned in many road races these days. Not just frowned upon, banned. And not because race organisers hate fun. It’s usually for insurance reasons, safety concerns, and the fact that runners dodging traffic with Billie Eilish in their ears is a solicitor's dream. The only legal exception is bone-conduction headphones, which still allow you to hear your surroundings (and other runners tutting at you).
But your man yesterday decided, “Rules? Nah. Common decency? Pass. Let's just subject the entire field to my ‘Ibiza Summer Vibes 2016’ playlist.”
It was loud. It was tinny. It was shite.
This Isn’t Glastonbury
Running with music? Grand. Loads of us do it. I do it in training. It gets the legs going, helps the miles pass, but we do it through our headphones.
In a race? On the speaker of your phone? Absolutely not.
There are other people around you. People breathing hard. Focusing. Struggling. Trying not to shite themselves.
Nobody wants your music forced into their earholes mid-effort. It’s the equivalent of farting in a lift and then pretending you don’t know what the big deal is.
Imagine if everyone did it. Twenty mobile phones blaring out music, each competing for aural dominance. One lad with trance, another with Taylor Swift, one rogue nutjob with a true crime podcast. It’d be chaos. A parade of personalised noise pollution marching down the Falls Road.
Society Is Already on the Brink
We’re already dealing with enough public noise offences. We’ve got:
- TikTok zombies with volume at full whack on public transport
- People watching Love Island on their phone mid-flight with no headphones
- Instagram Reels echoing through cafés like digital ghosts of attention spans lost
Can we at least keep running races free from this epidemic?
There are people who trained for months to run that race yesterday. Who tapered. Who paid entry fees. Who were just hoping to maybe, for once, not have a man sprint past them while pumping out Avicii remixes like some sort of Endorphin DJ.
If you genuinely can’t run without music, that’s fine. Buy a pair of bone-conducting headphones. They're legal. They work. And they won’t make the rest of us hate you.
You’re Not “That Guy”, You’re That Gobshite
We all know that guy. The one who walks through town centre with a speaker in hand, thinking he’s the vibe. Nobody likes that guy. He thinks he’s the main character. He’s not. He’s a moving nuisance. A human skip ad button.
Don’t bring that energy to a race.
Because while the rest of us are managing our pace, breathing through the uphill, and mentally negotiating with our internal demons, the last thing we need is your personal playlist bouncing off the shopfronts and hedges like aural graffiti.
In Conclusion: Stop It
Running is hard enough without being aurally assaulted by someone’s tinny dance music. If your vibes are so immaculate that they simply must be shared, DJ somewhere else. The start line isn’t a nightclub, and your arm isn’t a subwoofer.
Don’t be that gobshite.
