The song that never plays

In an Ironman, music isn't allowed. And yet, it plays.

You can't bring music to an IM. It's not a matter of etiquette, it's banned. The rule spells it out: no headphones, no music, at any point in the race. Break it and you get a penalty, or even a DQ.

Think about it. I train six days a week, almost always with the same playlist, in the same order, for months. And on the day that really matters, the day all of that exists for, they take it away. Right when I need it most, there's silence...

Or so I thought. Because for several races now I've noticed the same thing: the music doesn't leave. Kilometer 30 arrives, that point where the body has given everything it had and the head starts negotiating at full speed, and suddenly a song shows up. I didn't put it on. It just comes. Almost always the same one: "Beautiful Things", by Benson Boone. It plays inside, not whole, half broken, but it plays. And it pulls me forward.

One day I stopped treating it as a coincidence. What if I could trigger it on purpose? If I know the playlist by heart from listening so much, maybe on race day I carry it in my head even if it's not in my ears. A mantra with a beat...

It sounded like a story I was telling myself to hang on. So I went digging to find out what was really going on... And it's real. Every piece of the theory has science behind it, and it holds up better than I thought.

Almost everyone gets songs stuck in their head, more than 90% of people. And what triggers them more than anything? Hearing something over and over. So months of the same playlist aren't me being stubborn. It's me installing it, accidentally on purpose...

And here's the good part for race day: those songs show up right when the mind lets go, when you're on autopilot and your thoughts wander. Guess how you are at kilometer 30. Full autopilot, or fighting against everything. It's the perfect ground for the song to come out on its own. And since I always listen in the same order, one pulls the next, just like when you can't shake one song without the following one kicking in.

Imagining a song you know isn't make-believe. The brain lights up almost the same areas as when you actually hear it, and keeps guessing the next note. There's an experiment where they play a familiar song, cut it off suddenly, and the brain keeps playing the silent part on its own. It fills the silence.

And the best part for an athlete: when you imagine music, the part of the brain that moves the body lights up too. We don't just hear it inside, it sets our pace. It may not be a perfect recording, more like an endorphin-fueled remix. But it hits, and sometimes it hits harder emotionally than any other memory.

There's a ton of research on this, more than a hundred studies put together, and they all land in the same place: with music you perform better, effort feels lighter, and you even use less oxygen. In one study, work output went up by as much as 15%. And to be clear, it's not just that you feel more pumped. Your body actually does more with the same.

And what ties it all to the "no music" rule? The effect doesn't only live while the music plays. Listening to your music before you start already improves what you do afterward. And the music you choose works better than the music someone puts on for you. Which is exactly what a training playlist is: months of loading yourself up with your own music. You don't need it playing. You already carry it.

This is my favorite one. Marcora, one of the world's top experts on fatigue, ran a dead-simple experiment: he had people repeat encouraging phrases to themselves. They lasted almost 20% longer before cracking. And the effort felt lighter.

That's the whole point. In endurance you don't stop when the body runs out. You stop when the effort feels unbearable. The limit is what you feel, not the muscle. Lower what you feel and you last longer. A song in your head is exactly that, a mantra, but with rhythm and emotion already built in.

A few years ago Lucy Charles-Barclay shared the 39 songs she had on repeat while training for Kona, and says she played them over and over. Nobody has studied exactly this: recording a playlist into your head for months so you can summon it as a mantra on the day music is banned. Each piece on its own is proven. The full combo, put together like this, isn't. So it's not a lab recipe, it's an experiment that may or may not work for you. I adopted it, and in the end it's what I do with everything: I see something works, I understand why, and I build it on purpose instead of leaving it to chance.

One more thing, the most personal one: why that song. "Beautiful Things" isn't a hype track, it's not gym music. It starts quiet, almost fragile, and then it explodes. And it's not about winning. It's about how grateful you are for what you have, and the fear of losing it. That's kilometer 30 in a song: grateful the body can still go, and scared to death everything falls apart before the finish line. So when it shows up, it doesn't tell me to run faster. It reminds me why I'm there. That I train with my wife. That what hurts is, deep down, a privilege.

So no, there's no music in the race. But the song plays anyway. And sometimes the one that doesn't play on the outside is the loudest one you carry inside.

Build your playlist like you'll need it in silence. And if you don't have one, here's mine. Because on the day that really counts, the only music you'll have is the one you already recorded in your head.

SpotifyMusic

What's your song that never plays? Tell me in the comments.

Ro

If you want to go deeper, here are the sources:

• The no-headphones rule in triathlon: USA Triathlon.
• Lucy Charles-Barclay's 39 songs for Kona: Triathlete.
• Where earworms come from: Victoria Williamson and Durham's research.
• The brain that plays imagined music: Journal of Neuroscience and Scientific Reports.
• Music, performance and effort: 139 studies, Terry and Karageorghis, 2020.
• Pre-race music still counts: pre-task music, 2023.
• The mantra that buys time: Blanchfield and Marcora, 2014.