I saw him just as I was bracing for the steep incline to the bridge at the South Road Properties in the 21-kilometer race in last January’s Cebu City Marathon.

He was wearing a white running shirt—not the singlet issued by race organizers—and listening to music through earbud earphones.

INNER RHYTHM. Music not only takes runners away to a different place in their mind’s eye but also provides them rhythm for their cadence. (CREATIVE COMMONS PHOTO FROM THE FLICKR PAGE OF ZAPHGOD)

I made a move to pass him when, inexplicably, he suddenly raised his arms in seeming triumph.

I looked back after passing him and saw his eyes closed. He had an expression of someone who just won a race, in his mind’s eye.

I was tempted to bring him back to half-marathon reality, “Dude! We’re not even half-way yet!” but I was too preoccupied computing whether I could break two hours in my first 21K to bother.

I never saw that runner again. I don’t know how he did in the race. More importantly, I never knew what he was listening to.

But I’m willing to bet his player had either Vangelis’s “Chariots of Fire,” “Eye of the Tiger” or the theme song of Rocky.

Call it Chariots of Fire syndrome—the phenomenon of runners listening to music and then breaking into ecstatic celebration in the middle of the run.

Music does that.

In the Run With A Smile last Feb. 14, I was pacing my wife, Marlen, in what was a difficult 10K race for her because of an injury.

Near the University of the Philippines-Cebu campus, we caught up with two male teenagers who appeared to be running on a dare. They appeared to be aping the look of a rock star, not track stars.

While runners all around them were conserving their energy to brace for the steep uphill going to JY Square, one of the two was doing a mean air guitar routine.

He was very intent at it. An air guitar solo, I told myself. Like Slash in the Sweet Child of Mine instrumental solo.

The rock music presumably screaming from his mp3 player had transported him from that street in Barangay Lahug to the stage in Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion tour.

“Ooh, ooh, oh sweet child of mine!”

Music, said English poet William Congreve, soothes the savage breast.

But on the street, in the tracks and on the trail, music moves runners. It eases the torture that we subject ourselves to.

I built up endurance doing tempo runs while listening to Ramones. Punk’s not dead, I said in a blog post, it has gone jogging.

Nothing builds endurance more rhythmically than “ba-ba-bamp-ba ba-ba-ba-bamp-ba I wanna be sedated.”

But I have since stopped listening to music while running.

Running is not something to be endured, it is something to be enjoyed. I want to enjoy my runs with all my senses.

But in one of my solo runs home, the experience overwhelmed me.

And on the first Mandaue-Mactan Bridge, I screamed-sang the words of the poet:

“How does it feel / How does it feel / To be on your own / With no direction home / Like a complete unknown / Like a rolling stone?”

Running does that.