A Montage of Inspiration

With the exception of camp counselors and Human Resources directors, nobody loves 1980s sports movie training montage sequences quite like I do. To prepare for the SATs, I watched Rocky and then ran up the five steps leading up to my house a bunch of times in slow motion. (Turns out that the prep books work much better.) I’ve watched Doug Dorsey’s hockey-player-to-figure-skater transformation in The Cutting Edge so many times that the image of him struggling with the toepick appears on the inside of my eyelids every time I blink.

If, unlike me, you don’t spend 90 percent of your time watching 1980s sports movies, you may not know what a training montage sequence is. For your convenience, I’ve spent the remaining 10 percent of my time breaking this phenomenon down to its basic elements. (Cue intense synthesizer dance music.)

Open with the main character, let’s call him/her Laser, attempting high kicks and wearing a fluourescent skin-tight body suit and wrist/forehead sweatbands. Cut to a shot of Laser wearing the same fluourescent body suit, but it’s a lot sweatier. (This is to say: Laser is in the early stages of his/her very challenging workout regime and still struggling with it.) In the next shot, Laser is performing high-speed push-ups with a look of determined rage. Fade to a shot of her/him still doing push-ups but his/her hands are in fists on top of basketballs. “Nobody puts Laser in a corner,” she/he gasps. The final shot has Laser doing pirouettes in front of an audience which is, for the first time in history, performing a standing ovation for the entire performance.

With assistance from friends Nika and Jenna, I am proud to say that I have created my very own real-life marathon-training montage sequence, below. In it, you can almost hear my battle cry: “I will beat you, Oprah Winfrey’s marathon time!” Also worthy of note is my intense dedication to safety in stopping to tie my shoes. Without further ado:

(Cue Bon Jovi’s Eye of the Tiger)

Inspired? I should think so.