Love Songs That Went Off the Rails | What’s In Your Earbuds? – Love Songs Edition

What happens when you give two endurance athletes microphones, ask them to talk about love songs, and then let technology completely abandon them?

You get What’s In Your Earbuds? – Love Songs Edition: A Beautiful Disaster, and honestly… we wouldn’t want it any other way.

Hosted by Run Tri Bike’s own Jason Bahamundi and Joe Hardin, this episode starts exactly how every perfectly unpolished endurance story should with Jason flying solo because Joe’s internet decided to clock out early. Instagram had opinions. Restream had feelings. Facebook saved the day. And the community? They showed up immediately, proving once again that this show isn’t about polish.....it’s about people.

Once Joe finally arrived (audio intact, miracles do happen), the rails officially disappeared.

The original mission was simple: talk about songs that involve love, whether it’s in the title, the lyrics, or the artist’s name. What followed was a full-blown tour through music history, pop culture chaos, and deeply passionate arguments about why Cardi B’s “WAP” is, without question, a love song (Jason will absolutely die on this hill).

From Huey Lewis and the News’ “The Power of Love” launching a Back to the Future tangent, to debates that somehow connected Michael J. Fox, mixtapes, and endurance training vibes, this episode delivers peak What’s In Your Earbuds? energy. You come for the love songs. You stay because you’re laughing mid-run wondering how they got here.

The Run Tri Bike community brought the heat with people connecting from Pennsylvania, North Carolina, New York, Illinois, Indiana, Arizona, California, and beyond. The song list alone could fuel a 75-hour Spotify playlist: Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Nine Inch Nails, Guns N’ Roses, T-Pain, and yes… Watermelon Sugar absolutely made the cut.

Somewhere between cassette mixtapes, burned CDs, Napster nostalgia (RIP to everyone’s family computer), and random facts like Ryan Reynolds allegedly making a mixed CD for his wife, this episode turned into something bigger. It became a reminder of why music matters especially for endurance athletes.

Music gets us through long runs, hard workouts, emotional lows, and finish-line highs. It makes us laugh. It helps us survive tempo runs we didn’t want to do. And sometimes, it just reminds us that none of this has to be so serious.

By the end, new goals were born: hitting 75 hours on the community playlist and representing all 50 states. Seven down. Plenty more to go.

This episode is loud, messy, joyful, and deeply human you know, just like training, racing, and community when you stop chasing perfection and start embracing the beautiful chaos.

Hit play. Add a song. Laugh mid-mile. And welcome back to What’s In Your Earbuds?