Musical Anatomy of a Perfect Run.

1. You get to the gym. It's morning. You're groggy. You turn the treadmill on and start out chugging along at an easy stride (about 2 minutes short of your race pace, if you're me.) The first song on your iPod is "Any Way You Want Me" by Spiritualized. It's ambient, but not quite shoegaze-- the type of song that you zone out to for a while until you realize that it's building up to some badass wall-of-music guitar riffs as it goes along. Lyrics-wise, it's the type of song that you could imagine your boyfriend singing to you in order to ask you out for the first time if you were slightly more of a princess, and if the idea of a guy actually doing such a thing weren't so overwhelmingly cliche*1:

I've been watching you.
Have I been loving you in vain?
Girl there's no need to explain...
Any way that you want me...


2. Time to pick it up a little. CSS's "Alala" is next. Why? Because it has a kinda dark, persistant baseline, and because you love lyrics that make functional but not quite perfect sense in English:

Ah la la, Ah la la
Would you be kind
Gimme one little more
And i'll be superfine

Ah la la, Ah la la
You're so cool
Can i be your friend?
I'll drive you till the end

3. Now for Band of Horses and "Is There a Ghost." Because you're going to do a hill.

4. Kings of Leon, "Sex on Fire."* 2 This is a band that sounds like the type of power rock band that Jack Black would parody-- only, instead of nearly self-parodizing grandiosity, they have AWESOME. Plus, "haha, old people at the Y. I'm listening to a song that says the 's' word. Right here in front of you, and you don't know. Haha."

5. This is the big one. You're nice and warmed up, well into the run, and now you can start doing speed drills. You pull up "Sabotage," by The Beastie Boys. This song will turn you into a scowling, snarling, surging, running MACHINE. You will get MAD, like the Incredible Hulk of treadmill running, and you won't always be sure that you'll be able to contain your powers so as to use them only for good. You will run as if you are going after someone or something, like a big game animal that you are hell-bent on overtaking and struggling to the ground with your own bare hands, or like a thief who has stolen your laptop from your seat at a cafe, unwittingly unleashing the running Fury of West LA.

You will repeat this song at least twice, and you will make sure to give a little headbang and re-fiercen your look when you get to the climax:

I Can't Stand It! I Know You Planned It!
But I'm Gonna Set It Straight, This Watergate
I Can't Stand Rockin' When I'm In This Place
Because I Feel Disgrace Because You're All In My Face!

6. You're probably going to get a little tired now, which is why you need Eminem's "Till I Collapse." You'll slow down, but not too much, because you don't want Eminem to come and write a really mean rap about you.

Till I collapse I'm spilling these raps long as you feel em
Till the day that I drop you'll never say that I'm not killing them
Cause when I am not then I am stop pinning them
And I am not hip-hop and I'm just not Eminem...


7. Take a little breather. Maybe with some Red Hot Chili Peppers or Digible Planets. And then...

8. Your sprint to the finish line. You want to find this song about three minutes before the end of your run, so that you can finish in time with that last chord. It's The Presidents of the United States of America with "Peaches." Take it easy-ish for the verses, about race pace for the chorus stuff, and then, for that last minute, the big guitar riff section at the end, sprintasfastasyoucan!! Remeber the video?! They're in the forest, and then these ninjas attack from outta nowhere and for no reason, and the band has to fight the ninjas! Help them fight the ninjas with your running!! Aaaaaah, hurry!!!!

Whew...and then you're done and you feel all awesome. Cool down to something like Massive Attack's "Teardrop."

Then go back home, stretch, and start your day...





*1 My god, the cynicism.
*2 Sorry, parents.