PUBLISHED 08/29/2007
By Rob Burnett
I believe every runner has three inalienable rights. first, the right to claim that bending over to tie your shoes constitutes a stretching program. Second, the right to slather large quantities of Vaseline on your inner thighs in public. And third, the right to listen to any music you want during a run. In my office, it's this third one that's the sticking point.
I am training to run the ING New York City Marathon this November and have set out to make the perfect four-hour (all right, five-hour) running playlist. My two twenty-something assistants download the music for me. I will call them "Clackamas" and "Rutherford" because they are young and pretty and if I use their real names--Heather and Tracey--I fear it will unfairly skew your allegiance to their side.
My position is simple: Songs to run by do not need to be hip and cool and cutting edge. For me, running songs have one purpose and one purpose only: to distract. They need to take my mind off the marathon three minutes at a time. Clackamas and Rutherford's position is also simple: I'm a loser.
The first seed of discord is sown when I ask for ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down." Rutherford manages a polite but condescending smile, "Really? You really want that as part of your running mix?" Yes, and here's why: There is a man passionately singing that he does not under any circumstances want to be brought down. His desperate plea engulfs me with a burning question every time I hear the song: "Who or what is bringing him down?" Oh, how chorus after chorus he tries to tell me. "Don't bring me dowwwnnnn--Bruce?" "Greuss?" "Stroose?" What is that word? Doesn't he realize I can't help him unless I know? And just like that, three minutes of my run is behind me. Distraction.
Clackamas takes a friendlier approach. She doesn't flinch when I ask for Lou Bega's "Mambo No. 5." She dutifully downloads, but then tries to dilute my lameness by adding a dozen songs of her own choosing. The effect of this is that at some point during my run I am wrenched from the womb-like comfort of songs I know, and dropped smack in the middle of a Belgian nightclub where guys named Mathias wear sandals with white socks. I'm not exactly sure what it all means, but I do know that when I hear Ice Cube sing, "You can do it, put your back into it!" I am being mocked.
