The light barely cut through the morning fog blanketing the trail near my house. As my mind filled with excuses for skipping this annoying early morning jog, it dawned on me that these conditions are actually ideal for testing the motivational powers of military running cadences.
I laced up, clicked play and slowly, sleepily, trudged down the trail.
Pulsing through my headphones were the sounds of “Workout to the Running Cadences of U.S. Marines Vol. 2” on Spotify. I closed my eyes for a second and the barking Drill Instructor on track 1 reminded me of the late great R. Lee Ermey. I was suddenly in a slightly better mood.
While it lacked the intimidation of a DI yelling directly at you, the pace of “Marine Corps Infantry” had a steady rhythm which somehow caused my legs to naturally keep pace. The percussion audio and full stereo effect of the chants made the listening experience pretty cool. At one point the DI is only in your left ear and the responses are panned over to the right, helping your mind get fully immersed in the experience.
By track two, I turned up the volume and thought back to some of the runs I made with my buddies in my younger days. (In typical Navy style, one such run included a Camelback filled with water and white wine … it did not end well for any of us, but the funny memory helped me forget that I hated running.)
3 tracks into the run and I found myself reciting lines like, “Then one day a man in blue, Said son I got a job for you, There's travel adventure and loads of fun, and we’ll even teach you how to shoot a gun!”
At one point I switched over to an Army playlist I found myself happily chanting, “Airborne Ranger Airborne Ranger what did you do? I killed some commies for me and you!”
As I arrived back at my starting point a sweaty mess, the only part I would change is to consolidate the tracks into one playlist before the run.
No longer tired and annoyed like I was 20 minutes ago, I wiped my face still humming lyrics like, “ Hi Ho, lock and load, To kill the enemy and take control.”
While the cadences may have only been a few minutes of my morning, something about them made me feel like the baddest-Dad on the block for the rest of the day.
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