Inspiration can come in many different forms. On Tuesday, it came in the form of one of three text messages I received before I woke up at 7 a.m.
That was from Travis, one of my best friends who helped get me hooked on soccer. He also sent me a text that encouraged me to "get the (expletive deleted) up it's game day!!!!!", one of two texts pertaining to America's game with Belgium today (the other came from my brother-in-law who informed me he was taking off work at 9... for a game that started at 2 p.m. his time).
But I digress. I had already decided I was going to run today, despite some minor knee pain and the unquenchable desire to roll over and go back to sleep, but with Travis' 'Merica rallying cry, I threw on my American Outlaws bandana and found the "USA, USA, USA" playlist on Spotify.
This provided the second surge of inspiration. The playlist contained a nice mix of arena rock and hip hop, all up tempo and solid to run to. I decided to run the straightaways for three laps at Beckemeyer, then do some running in the grass between the two soccer goals.
Although my knees and lungs rebelled against this idea, I managed to run both straightaways on all three laps, with the help of Europe's Final Countdown on the final lap. While I found it odd that a band named after a decidedly non-American continent was on a playlist with not one but three USAs in its name, Final Countdown is my go to song in big game situations. I even catch myself humming it when I'm covering postseason play for the paper.
After the countdown hit zero, I hit the grass, which was apparently the cue for the playlist to switch to hip hop. I'm not a huge rap fan, but for running, you can do worse than Ludacris and Bonecrusher. Near the end of my workout, I was beginning to wear down. Then Eminem's Til I Collapse came on and struck a chord with me. I'm hit and miss with Marshall Mathers, don't like his goofy stuff, love his more serious work.
While the song is about the rap game, a lot of the lyrics translate well to running, particularly Nate Dogg's work in the chorus.
"Till the roof comes off, till the lights go out; Till my legs give out, can’t shut my mouth. Till the smoke clears out - am I high? Perhaps. I'ma rip this sh*t till my bone collapse."
The only thing I smoke is pork tenderloin, but the other than that, the lyrics were pretty inspiring. I managed to do 20 minutes of running on grass, including something that almost resembled a sprint at one point.
Ultimately a text message or a song isn't going to make or break my performance at the Big Dawg Dare, but it's kind of nice to know that there is something out there that can get me going, even when I'd rather be in bed.
Days til the Dare: 18
My workout for America.
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