RUN like a BRAZILIAN!

Polar Vortex cartoon

Forgive me for my excited exuberance for the beautiful country of Brazil but I ran there virtually today for 12.71 miles and had a blast! This is how we Midwesterners beat the polar vortex-we run inside (in warm, tropical locations if possible) when it’s just too cold or impractical to run outside every day. So it was off to the treadmill to Belterra, Brazil for 5+ miles and off to Rio for 7+. And these were slow runs since I was a tourist!

So what does it mean to run like a Brazilian? Running hills, up and down, rainforest jungles, sharp turns, and running to Rio, tracing a path from the Christ the Redeemer statue and veering southeast over thick green forested trees through swimming pools to the incomparable Copacabana beach!
Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Down and back through the sand and water!
Copacabana Beach, Rio

You remember the song Walk Like an Egyptian by the Bangles? 1985? Wow! What a year that was! Apologies to the Bangles, but “Walk” should be “RUN”! What if we rewrote it as “Run Like a Brazilian” (remembering that there has been at least one elite world-class marathoner from Brazil recently-maybe it was da Silva?)? For the wey-oh, wey-ohs, we’ll substitute “jun-gle, jun-gle”. Thinking up these lyrics helped get me through my two runs. Music helps!

So here goes:

RUN LIKE A BRAZILIAN (to the tune of “Walk Like an Egyptian”, see below)

All the runners all over the beach
They do the sand dance,
Don’t you know?

If they move too quick
They slide like a domino.

All the jungle animals chase me now
They try to keep my pace.

Monkeys heard me run through the jungle
Now they steal bananas from my Nathan case.

Jungle and beach types join and sing together
Run like a Brazilian!

All you office workers: go punch out now
You can go home and you can run
You know you can’t stay here too long
Because you know running is fun.

Children drop their ipods and disconnect
From all those electronic things
See the runners on the beach
Drop everything and give them chase!

All the kids working in the schools say
Run like a Brazilian!

Attack the hills and do speed work
A little fartlek and intervals to round it out
Long slow distance and tempo runs.

Life is hard you know
So run with the flow.

Some run with their shoes,
Some run only without them barefoot
Doesn’t matter what’s on your feet.
It matters that you run with your heart.

Sneak past the anacondas and the jungle animals
Press the warm beach sand underneath your feet
Watch out for low dangling jungle branches
Jun-gle, Jungle.
Run like Brazilians.

All the people sing while running:
Run like a Brazilian!
Run like a Brazilian!

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