The Mighty Makes Running With Music Manageable

Whether it’s a favorite pair of shoes, a beloved set of mittens, or even a trusty thermos, we’ve all fallen in love with products that makes our running lives better. With Man, I Just Love This… we at Runner’s World have decided to share some of our life-changing favorites.

For an impressive and fortuitous stretch of 312 weekend long runs—and all their 4,368-plus miles covered—I had at least one trusty teammate to run with, if not more. All through college, and for the year after, I could count on being entertained for the duration of my week’s most mile-filled day. My teammates and I would start out easy, full of goofy laughter. The conversation would evolve as the runs went on, and sometimes by the end more existential topics were covered, such as why liege waffles are superior to all other waffles—my friends are weird and unceasingly hungry. As we dropped the pace, nearing the end of the run, we’d be suffering, but it’s easier to suffer with someone else.

I trained for my first marathon with one of my roommates and former college teammates. Our other marathon training partner lived just blocks away and joined us for all of our 20-milers along Chicago’s waterfront path. To really bolster our rolling house party, another one of our roommates would bike alongside of us, holding all of our long-run fuel in her backpack, while another would rollerblade, shouting her own words of encouragement and carrying a speaker that seemed to perpetually be blasting Beyoncé.

But last summer, my running world was shaken. I was living back at home in Wisconsin before making the move to New York City. As I was about to set out on my first long run on the trails I grew up training on, it hit me: I had no one to run long with. What would I do when it got hard? Who would I talk to? Who would carry my Gu and yell at me to keep running? Without Beyoncé ringing in my ear, how would I survive?

One option would be to run with my phone, but I despise that, even if I have an armband to keep it in. For one, an armband plus the phone gets bulky. Another, I sweat a lot—and, yes, through an armband. It was also summer in the Midwest. I never wake up early enough on the weekend to hit the cool morning breeze, so by the time I head out the door there’s almost a 100-percent chance of 90-percent humidity. That phone will be destroyed with sweat. It could be just me, but I also feel like all 0.35 pounds of an iPhone really weighs you down on the run.

Nonetheless, after my first solo long run of—gasp—simply looking at the birds and Lake Michigan (I’ll admit it was beautiful), but it still got boring after mile 13 with no art of conversation or loud tunes. Afterward, I did some Googling around, which was when I found the device of my dreams: the Mighty. It’s the size of an iPod shuffle, you can clip it onto your shirt or sports bra, and it weighs basically nothing. At that point, you don’t even notice there’s any sort of device attached to you.

You can order the little guy online for only $85.99 (website only—currently sold out on Amazon). It’s shipped to your doorstep, you download the Mighty app, connect the Mighty app to your Spotify account, connect to the app to the actual device via Bluetooth, and sync the device to the playlists of your choice. It holds more than 1,000 songs, has a five-hour battery life, pairs with Bluetooth headsets and speakers, and is sweat-resistant. (This part isn’t advertised, but I’ve found you can also accidentally drop it as many times as you want—it’s indestructible.)

There’s only a few buttons on the whole device, so it’s designed to be very user-friendly—and easy to hit pause or turn the volume up or down midrun.

The best part: You don’t need wifi to play the Mighty. Since all of the Spotify playlists are stored offline, you could literally be in the middle of the woods with no signal towers for miles and be singing along to your favorite tunes. The only catch with the Mighty is that you need a Spotify Premium account to make it work.

This past summer and heading into the fall, I crushed my 20-mile marathon training runs, and I did them all by myself. The miles flew by, thanks to my killer summer playlists and my fresh new Mighty. I don’t have to get annoyed with carrying my phone or worry the whole run that my phone will break because of how much I am sweating. Even though I’ve had my Mighty since the summer, I still get excited to grab it, press play, and go.

I no longer dread my next 312, likely solo long runs. I have music, without cramping my style.