All my friends, all my friends are here

“All my friends are here.”

Those were the words pumping out of my AirPods as I took off from the start line of my second-ever marathon.

Wind back the clock a decade ago and show me the words I just wrote, and I would not believe they were genuine. Despite being a long-time distance runner, the idea of facing down the grueling task of running 26.2 miles without stopping didn’t just sound unpleasant – it sounded stupid! But the pandemic reoriented a lot of things for me, one of which was my dedication to distance running. And so, on May 27, 2023, I laced up my racing shoes and gave the marathon distance my second try, despite some excruciating memories that were still fresh in my brain from having run the same distance on the same course just one year earlier.

The running community has mixed feelings about racing with music, especially marathons. There’s this belief, in some circles, that music is a crutch, or even a distraction. Having tried racing a marathon since that second one without headphones in my ears, I can definitely understand the appeal of leaving yourself open to hear the world around you – conversation with other runners, cheers from the crowd, snippets of whatever songs spectators happen to have blaring out of their Bluetooth speakers as you run by – not to mention the sharp focus you can lock into when there’s nothing in your head but the miles. For my first five marathons, though, I did run with music, and during that second one, it helped carry me off to a level of serenity I had never achieved before and have never returned to since.

A lot of that, I think, had to do with the song I chose to kick off marathon attempt number 2.

The day before that race, Matchbox Twenty released Where the Light Goes, their fifth album as a band and their first one since 2012. Matchbox Twenty had been one of my favorite bands in the world growing up. Starting with their hit-filled debut album, Yourself or Someone Like You from 1996, this band and their angsty, melodic songs were a platonic ideal for me of what music could be. I still can’t hear tracks like “Real World,” “3AM,” or “Push” without flashing back to car rides to school when I was in first grade, my brother’s copy of the Matchbox Twenty debut spinning in the CD player. Later, as I started governing my own music listening, 2000’s Mad Season and 2002’s More Than You Think You Are were some of the first albums I truly fell in love with. The former was, for a time, my very favorite album ever.