Gabba Gabba Hey!

I miss running with the gang on Saturday mornings.  Due to family schedules I have been doing my long runs on Sundays, which means I’ve been doing them by myself.  I like to run with some music.  I have an iPod Shuffle; an amazing piece of technology.  It holds one GB of data.  The dimensions are 1.62 x 1.07 x 0.41 inches and it weighs about half an ounce.  So small, a dog could swallow it. 

Apple ran an ad in 2004 for its iPod.  They asked celebrities “What’s on your iPod?”  I would describe the genre of songs currently on my iPod as Punk Rock.  Artists include: The Clash, The Pretenders, Billy Idol, The Police, Blondie and Green Day.  But the overwhelming number of songs, making up roughly 75%, are by The Ramones. 

The driving beat and hearty 1 – 2 – 3 – 4 help keep me motivated.  It puts me in a good mood.  The Ramones were a dysfunctional group; Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and the drummers (Tommy, Markey and Richie).  They appealed to a selective audience of loyal followers and never achieved the fame they deserved while they were in their prime.  They stayed true to their music.  Johnny (John Williams Cummings) died from prostate cancer in 2004.  Joey (Jeffry Ross Hyman) died from lymphoma in 2001.  Dee Dee (Douglas Glenn Colvin) died from a heroin overdose in 2002.  None of them were runners.  Ironically, the only surviving members of the band are the drummers. 

I had the great fortune to see The Ramones perform live in the spring of 1986 at a dance marathon while I attended Syracuse University.  A fight broke out when one of the skin heads in the mosh pit bounced into a group of football players.  The athletes picked up the poor dude and threw him into a crowd of fraternity men.  The band stopped after playing just three songs.  

Here are my favorite tracks:

"Danny Says" which is a love song written by singer Joey Ramone at the Tropicana Hotel in Los Angeles when The Ramones were staying there for the recording of End of the Century album.  The romantic inspiration for the song is believed to be Linda Danielle, Joey's girlfriend at the time.  Linda later ended her romantic involvement with Joey to instead begin a relationship with, and eventually marry, the band's guitarist Johnny Ramone.  Although this virtually ended dialog between the two bandmates, both remained in The Ramones until the band split up in 1996.

"Blitzkrieg Bop" was named after the German World War II tactic blitzkrieg.  The precise meaning and subject matter of the song are, unlike many of The Ramones' other early compositions, somewhat vague and obscure.  The song’s classic “Hey!  Ho!  Let’s Go!” has become a staple of sports arena PA systems around the country.  

Rock 'n' Roll High School is a 1979 musical comedy film produced by Roger Corman, and features The Ramones wrote two songs for the soundtrack, including the title song. 

Joey Ramone’s solo album Don't Worry About Me was released posthumously in 2002, and includes the single "What a Wonderful World", a cover of the Louis Armstrong standard.  The song was used in the movie Freaky Friday. 

So, what does all of this have to do with running?  Not much, I suppose, except it is what I think about when I think about running.  Here are some of the other thoughts I had on today’s 21 mile run:

Train the way you race; race the way you train. 

Don’t just make time or take time to train.  You have to fight for it, otherwise it won’t mean as much.  Don’t go looking for time, you won’t find it.   

Once an athlete; always an athlete. 

There are no silver bullets.  No magic potions, no innovative training techniques that will lead to faster times. Only work.

Let’s take a trip, the two of us, into our golden years.  Let’s lay our results aside.  You may have beaten me.  I may have been lucky enough to finish ahead of you.  It doesn’t matter.  Let’s run the rest of the way together. 

When I arrive at the Pearly Gates, I want to come tumbling in with a mass of Lycra, Nylon and Gore-Tex, lathered in Gu and Powerade; asking “Did you get my splits?”