MARCH '24

Past Me labeled this thing "Primer for the pint" and I'm twenty-three minutes into a five-miler when the genius reveals itself. This isn't a playlist for marathon training or tempo runs or whatever cardiovascular virtue signaling your running club demands. This is thirty-seven minutes of amphetamine punk energy designed to earn the beer waiting at Mile 6. The math is simple: Alkaline Trio opens with "Teenage Heart", all minor-key melancholy and distortion, and my legs remember they've done dumber things than run before Happy Hour.

The genre collision here is the whole damn point. Pop punk bleeds into garage rock bleeds into egg punk bleeds into folk punk, and the whiplash keeps the body confused enough to forget it's suffering. White Reaper and Spiritual Cramp's "Shimmy" hits at Mile 1 with surf-rock shimmer layered over punk thrash—two genres that shouldn't work together but do because neither one negotiates. Then IDLES crashes in with "Hall & Oates", all post-punk fury and Joe Talbot screaming about masculinity while I'm just trying to maintain 8-minute pace. Bad Nerves delivers "Antidote" in under two minutes of pure adrenaline-spiked garage punk, the kind of track that's over before your lungs realize they should be protesting. This is DIY ethos as cardiovascular fuel: three chords, zero production polish, maximum refusal to quit when quitting makes sense.

Mile 4 is where the playlist's architecture shows its surgical precision. Death Lens drops "Moontower" exactly when my quadriceps start drafting resignation letters. The tempo's unrelenting, the bass is all distortion and forward motion, and suddenly the argument for stopping early doesn't have legal standing. BODEGA's "No Vanguard Revival" is seventy-one seconds of post-punk chaos that matches the chaos happening in my lungs. Then One Dimensional Creatures and STIFF RICHARDS pile on with sub-two-minute punk missiles, each one a refusal to let the body's complaints reach management. The genius of this stretch is the pacing: short tracks that end before the suffering calcifies into actual quitting thoughts. You can survive anything for ninety seconds, even when your central nervous system is staging a coup.

Frank Turner closes with "Girl From The Record Shop" and "Get Better"—folk punk with actual melody and hope, which feels like a betrayal until you realize you're done. Thirty-seven minutes elapsed. Five miles completed. The pint is earned, scientifically justified, morally unimpeachable. This playlist isn't about crushing PRs or finding your limits or any of that aspirational garbage. It's about moving fast enough, with enough distortion and three-chord defiance, that the beer tastes like victory instead of just Thursday. The punk ethos applies: show up, refuse to quit, don't overthink it. Run hard, drink honest. Primer for the pint, indeed.