Voices – July 2025

Running with a Hearing Impairment – Judy Rowley

Judy shares her very personal experience of what it is like to run with a hearing impairment. You will be surprised at what the impact is on someone who trains and competes, and what as members and coaches we can do by means of support.

Sometimes deafness comes gradually, as it did with me. I realised that I was finding it harder to hear and eventually went to have my hearing tested and was prescribed Hearing Aids. There are many causes of hearing loss and it can occur at any age, but also there can become a gradual deterioration with age in much the same way as our sight can deteriorate.

Hearing loss is a hidden disability, and one that sometimes people are ashamed of and try to conceal, as indeed I have done for a while. But I think it’s now time for me to speak out.

One preconception that most of us have (myself included) is that hearing aids make everything better, and it is just a matter of making sounds louder so they can be heard. Unfortunately, although hearing aids do magnify sound, they magnify all sounds, so at the same time as voices become more audible, so do all background noises such as music in shops and restaurants, traffic, and other people talking.

The effect of this is that the brain has to work at shutting out other noise as well as trying to hear what people are saying, so it’s like a double load of work for it to do! Which in itself is tiring, takes a lot of concentration, and sometimes is impossible to do anyway, and it’s easier just to give up trying. The nearest experience I can think of is if you wear glasses for reading, but are in a situation where you are trying to read without them, (like the labels on food in a shop for example), you peer closely, try and pick out the relevant words and make sense of them, and it takes longer and more effort. But the words do at least stay still and don’t move so you can take your time. Trying to follow a conversation without hearing properly is similar: you try to get the relevant words and then the general gist of what someone is saying – but the sounds don’t stay still, they move quickly and disappear. And that’s it. So sometimes, depending how quickly the person is speaking and if you can’t see their mouth to lip-read, it’s a choice of asking them to repeat themselves, or just nodding and hoping you’re giving a relevant reply!

How this affects me when running is that I can’t hear what you are saying if you are running in front or behind me, and not always even when you are alongside, especially if I’m breathing heavily. A side effect of wearing hearing aids is that they magnify the sound of my breathing unfortunately, so I can hear myself all too clearly! Also it means that I can’t see your mouth to lip read, so I may well only catch a few words of what you are saying. So please forgive me for appearing to not be interested in what you’re saying, or being very slow on the uptake. I really would like to be able to talk and run companionably, but often it’s easier for me just to be on my own. This all is made much more difficult in darker nights when we are training. It’s hard for all of us to look where we are going, avoiding tree roots, kerbs, bins and all the other hazards of running in the streets and we have to concentrate hard, and I can’t do that and strain to hear what people are saying at the same time, so I will seem to be antisocial.

There are some ways that we can all make it easier for each other to hear what we are saying, and I know from experience that sometimes children have undiagnosed hearing impairment, which may have the same impact on their behaviour too. They too may seem not to be paying attention to what is being said, not doing what they are told and perhaps “acting out”. So if you are coaching adults or children, gestures and demonstrations really help. I watch very carefully when the person leading a group is telling me what we are going to do, and then watch what everyone else is doing to make sure I’m getting it right! But people in the group talking when the leader is doing this makes it a lot harder for me.  Repeating what you say is helpful too. Giving me a second or two to take in and process what I’ve heard is also very useful, and it means I don’t have to keep saying“excuse me” or “sorry, I missed that” which I find embarrassing and which must be irritating to you and everyone else as well. And if you can remember not to put your hand in front of your mouth that’s great news for me!

One last effect is that in noisy places, I can’t hear anything that anyone is saying, so that is why I don’t come for a coffee or drink after any sessions, and have left early on some social occasions. It’s not that I don’t want to be there, far from it, but being with people but not being able to hear and to enjoy your conversation defeats the whole purpose. So please forgive me for that.

And I hope we can keep on running together and enjoying the sport we love, whatever the state of our hearing!