BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS

What came first – the donut or the run that's supposed to undo it? That's the question I'm asking myself at 7 AM on a Sunday, lacing up my shoes while staring at the box on my counter. There's something honest about a running playlist called BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS that opens with a track called "Space Train" and promises nothing but fuzzy, psychedelic doom for the next forty minutes. No euphoric EDM bullshit. No motivational nonsense. Just the acknowledgment that we're all running away from something, usually last night's decisions.

This playlist is thirteen tracks of stoner rock, doom metal, and neo-psychedelic haze – the kind of stuff Barry would argue belongs in a smoky basement, not on the Lakefront Trail. But here's what he'd miss: there's something perfect about running to music this heavy and slow. Sweet Leaf – obviously, the 2014 remaster because someone cared enough to get the details right – sits at the center like the gravitational pull it is. Black Sabbath in 1971, recorded at Island Studios with Rodger Bain producing, Tony Iommi's riff so thick you could spread it on toast. That opening cough wasn't an accident. It was the sound of a band acknowledging exactly what they were about.

Top 5 reasons running to doom metal makes more sense than running to pop-punk:

1. The tempo forces you to find your own rhythm instead of chasing someone else's BPM fantasy. These tracks lumber and groove – you match your breathing to the riff, not the other way around.

2. Stoner rock doesn't lie to you about effort. There's no "you've got this!" energy. Just: this is heavy, you're carrying it, deal with it.

3. The fuzz and distortion create a wall of sound that blocks out everything – the voice that says turn around, the one that says you're too old for this, the one that remembers exactly what she said when she left.

4. Tracks like "Heavy/Like a Witch" and "Dirtpicker" have a hypnotic quality. You stop thinking. Mile two happens without you noticing because you're inside the riff.

5. By the time you hit "The Eyewall" at the end, you've earned something. Not redemption. Not clarity. Just the knowledge that you showed up and moved forward even when everything felt like sludge.

Here's what nobody tells you about running: the first mile always lies to you. Your legs feel wrong, your breathing's off, and you're convinced this was a terrible idea. That's where "Space Train" and "Dirtpicker" live – in that early discomfort where you're negotiating with yourself about turning around. The guitars are blown-out and garage-heavy, bands like Spiral Drive and Post Animal channeling Sabbath worship through a modern fuzz pedal. It sounds like effort feels.

Then something shifts around "Slow." The playlist settles into a groove, the kind where your stride locks in and you stop thinking about mechanics. Moses Gunn Collective's brand of space rock opens up the sound – it breathes. You're not fighting anymore. You're just moving. Dick would point out that this sequencing isn't accidental, that whoever built this understands dynamics and negative space. He'd be right.

"Sweet Leaf" hits at the two-thirds mark, and it's the moment where you remember why you do this. Not the running. The music. Geezer Butler's bassline is so warm and deep it feels like a hug from someone who understands that life is absurd and beautiful and mostly just absurd. I've listened to this song a thousand times – on vinyl at the store, through blown speakers in someone's basement, alone at 2 AM after a breakup wondering what came first, the music or the misery. Every time, it sounds like the first time.

The back half – "Gold," "Heavy/Like a Witch," "Vision of Sin" – is where the playlist gets genuinely heavy. Not just sonically, though the doom and sludge metal elements pile on like lake-effect snow. It's the emotional weight. These are the miles where running stops being about fitness and becomes about proving something to yourself. That you can finish. That you're not the person who quits. That maybe, just maybe, forward motion counts for something even when you're not sure where you're going.

"The Eyewall" closes it out with nearly eight minutes of whatever cosmic journey it's taking you on. By then, you're done. Physically spent, mentally quiet, standing in your kitchen drinking water and staring at that donut box again. The difference is, now you've earned it. Or you haven't. The donut doesn't care. The playlist doesn't judge. It just offered you forty minutes of heavy, beautiful noise to soundtrack your attempt at being slightly better than you were yesterday.

Is this the best running music? No. Is it the most effective? Definitely not. But it's honest. And sometimes, when you're running away from your own thoughts at 7 AM on a Sunday, honesty is the only thing that gets you out the door.