Blog
It’s London Marathon Day and Why I love Squeeze
Written by Jimmy
So first: congrats to Priscah Jeptoo from Kenya for winning the London Marathon. We love Kenya and give all our well wishes to our Singing Wells friends.
But this is about Squeeze, which I mentioned in yesterday’s blog on the studio…
I ran the Marine Core Marathon in 1987.
Ran is an overstatement. But I finished in under four hours which was my goal. And my other two training buddies both quit on me before the marathon so there was some satisfaction in persevering.
I loved running before the marathon and hated it after. Little aches in my ankles moved to my knees as I trained on 13 mile runs. Little aches in my knees moved to my hips as I ran on the day of the marathon and reached my 17. My nipples bled because I never knew that I should put plasters over them. My inner thighs chaffed because I didn’t know I was supposed to put the vaseline they distributed there. I kept putting the stuff on my forehead thinking it would make me go faster.
I’m not sure I like an event that makes my nipples bleed. I’ve tried to think of circumstances where that would be a good thing. But I fail. This isn’t me, but you get the idea…
But that’s not why I like Squeeze.
Remember the Walk Man? Remember cassette tapes? Well. I had recorded Argybargy on one side and Squeeze’s greatest hits on the other and ran about 1200 miles to that one cassette. At an 15 minutes I mile (I’m sure I was slightly faster but easy math) that’s 400 hours I listened to Squeeze. At 30 minutes a side that means I listened to each song about 800 times. And for the most part I still didn’t hate those songs by the end of my training. That seems to be a pretty good ‘great song’ test….
Here’s a few of my favourites: