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Pavement Bound Mix Series Vol. 1 – BANKRUPT

Running and I have shared stops and starts. For a long time I never loved running. I ran to keep the blues away, or ran because I wasn’t hitting the gym that day and it seemed easier. I played Football (soccer) for years and ran to keep speed up.

Recently though running became something much more out of a pretty scary health experience. For about a year and a half I did Crossfit. There is plenty of fodder for jokes and hatred against Crossfit. I want to say it now that I don’t hate it, I even miss it.

There is a joke about a vegan and cross fitter walking into a bar and everyone knowing. Because they would have told everyone in the first five minutes.

Crossfit is in my mind a very supportive community of fit people pushing each other to do more than they thought they could. I did workouts I didn’t think I would ever make it through and left drenched but happy.

Crossfit features loads of weight, AMRAPS (as many rounds as possible) WODS (workouts of the day), talking about WODS, but little running. I grew strong, but not necessarily fit after over a year.

But I digress.

My wife and I went on our first “baby moon” where I had a scary experience. I had just woken up in our hotel room on the shores of Cascais Portugal. I had gotten my shorts on to go for a run because I wasn’t going to be hitting a Crossfit box for a week and I remember fumbling with my iPhone and Nike+ and not being able to tap the buttons. My poor wife describes this as much more terrifying – I was slurring, stumbling, falling down.

Imagine if I had actually made it out the door.

EMT’s were rushed over, but within minutes I felt fine, just a little weird. I spent the rest of the day in the ER followed by a CT Scan on my brain. My poor pregnant wife in a foreign country sitting waiting for me outside. Not great for a pregnant woman to be in a hospital – too many germs and sick people.

Let’s chalk it up to bad translation, but the nurse in the waiting room did nothing to help my fears.

“You, you stay here, if you leave you could die. What we find in your head not good,” she said.

I freaked the fuck out. Later, much later, I was told a blood clot had pushed through in my brain — luckily it had pushed through, but my weird fumbling moment was basically a tiny stroke.

Three days later trapped in that hospital after many more tests they let me go. I have never felt so happy to breathe fresh air. I would’ve run 20k that day.

Hospitals are the worst places on earth. This was followed by three months of blood thinners, injections, bruises from the injections and various scary drugs. All of which I am off now. No problems since.

The only reason they gave me was that intense strenuous “sport” like Crossfit could cause these things. The Dutch doctors back home did less to shed light on my condition – “sometimes things like this happens in young people.” — Yeah what the fucking fuck.

So I run now. That is what I do, not saying a few push-ups and sit-ups don’t happen or light strength training but I am not longer banging out personal bests in clean and jerks or Olympic weight-lifting techniques.  I run for me, my son, and my wife.

Running is a release, an hour to you, working toward a better distance, a better time, a new direction or route — or just not even thinking about it. Running is beautiful like that. It is what you make of it.

So what gets me cranking on a run is good music. I like bass. I like it about 120-140 bpm. Something harder, something that makes you want to scream rap lyrics at people as you fly past them. I have admittedly done this.

Pavement Bound would like to welcome you to the first in a series of interviews with musicians and music industry personalities about their relationship to running. Along with this a series of mixes by some of the best from around the world.

This is my own mix for you under my moniker BANKRUPT. It was recorded in one single take with no changes, ableton or what not. So accept it with all its faults.

Pavement Bound Mix Series Vol. 1 BANKRUPT by Pavementbound on Mixcloud

We have some BANGERS coming for you. We hope you enjoy and we won’t be mad at you if you start rapping at top volume mid run.

Cheers, Gabe.