’Cause in the darkness I hear somebody call my name
And when you realize how they tricked you this time
And it’s all lies but I’m strung out on the wire
In these streets of fire
From “Streets of Fire” by Bruce Springsteen
I glance down at my feet and I see them striding in time with this opening song of my iPod’s “Running” playlist. It’s an aggressive stride for my regular half-mile warm-up, but this is how I’m feeling today. I’m in a bad mood. Although I guess it doesn’t really matter how I’m feeling any day.
Warming up and running using the same carefully crafted Springsteen-powered playlist—I turn to his music daily for audiological shots of emotional energy—for more than two years I just know that, regardless of what mood I’m carrying with me, by the time Streets of Fire reaches these lines, give or take 10 steps I’m striding over the makeshift asphalt patch near the final curve going out of our quiet neighborhood. It’s an oblong asphalt patch about the size of an overgrown zucchini. I only notice it because with these lines of the song, I always glance down at my feet.
Perhaps it’s just out of habit that I glance down at this point and see where my feet are in location to the oblong asphalt patch. It certainly isn’t because I am physically warming up on what anyone could honestly consider streets of fire. I start out jogging down our sleepy little Southgate Subdivision’s Concourse Drive, which essentially is a big circle around the neighborhood with no through traffic.
Indeed this glance at my feet is habitual because it’s always at this point of the song and at this point in the road that the novelty of “going out for a run” wears off and the reality of what this actually means settles in. And when this happens I no longer feel like I’m running alone. MS is always with me.
“Those feet feel unusually heavy today, don’t they, Dan? I made them pretty numb, huh? You’re right. It’s not just your feet, Dummy, it’s both of your flippin’ legs. You’re barely a minute into what’s going to be nearly a 35-minute run. That’s about how long it takes to drive to Midland, isn’t it? You sure you got it today? You so could just turn around and go back home and rest. Tomorrow, Dan, you can be a hero and run five miles instead of your regular four. Because tomorrow you could feel so much better. What do you say, hero? Let’s call it a day.”
That’s the MS talking, every single time I go out for a run.
I run to prove to myself and to MS that after all these years, he still doesn’t have control over me. And I imagine that it always takes MS until this point of my route to realize that I was serious when I said I was going to go for a run. He always must think I’m just bluffing with that whole stretching thing and double-knotting my Reebok running shoes, putting the Garmin GPS-enabled sports watch on my wrist, strapping the iPod headphones over my head and onto my ears, and then stepping out the door and pressing “Start” on the Garmin and “Play” on the iPod.
Seems like a lot to do for somebody who’s just bluffing.
And in less than two-tenths of a mile, right about at the overgrown zucchini-like patch, MS catches on and every single time starts in with, “Those feet feel unusually heavy today . . .” Striding over the patch and rounding the Concourse Drive curve to leave Southgate, I refute his questioning with, “Today, I can be a champion and run my regular 4.6, including a half-mile warm-up. Because tomorrow, much to your doing, I could feel so much worse.”
MS makes an almost convincing argument for me to quit, but I never have turned around and gone home without first completing my regular route.