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Best movie before big swim?
DavidW
Member
After months of training, it is finally the night before the big swim. The feed bottles are ready and the bag is packed. Time to sit and watch an inspirational movie! Does anyone have any favorites? Last year on the night before 8 Bridges I watched "On a Clear Day" about a guy who loses his job and decides to swim the English Channel. It was great, but kind of sad too. Perhaps a non swimming movie like "Rocky", "Cinderella Man" (true story of depression era boxer) or "Miracle" (1980 USA Hockey team)?
Comments
Chariots of Fire!
Man on a wire
Birdie
Moby Dick
Fitzcaraldo
Big Fan
...anything worth doing is worth overdoing.
Last year before 8 Bridges I went and saw Finding Dory for inspiration, this year I'm going with Wonder Woman. Not sure how this will work out...I'm a lot more like Dory than WW
Jaws.
)
I was going to say "anything but Jaws..."
It's always a bad hair day when you work at a pool.
Braveheart!
Vision Quest
If you are about to swim near the border of Canada, I strongly recommend NOT watching the South Park movie. Otherwise, you'll be mentally singing Blame Canada the entire bloody swim and your kayaker will think you are absolutely off your rocker. Not that I know from experience or anything...
Galaxy Quest- never give never surrender and RUDY
and Open Water
Something about Wonder Woman crossing No Man's Land felt very OWS to me. Step by step by step, each one a victory that the average man would never even contemplate attempting...
Of course, that's partly on the brain for me because of my swim on Saturday. In my landlocked city, my favorite place to swim is the river. This week, despite the calm weather we've had for weeks, there were a ton of branches in the water, as if we'd had a big storm that downed lots of trees. Whenever I found myself swimming through a bunch of tree jetsam and adapting my stroke to push it out of my way, I couldn't help imagine my hands were Wonder Woman's shield with bullets bouncing off of it. Silly, but it helped me take an annoyance and create a moment that felt powerful.
Greatness! My son got really into wrestling this past year. So for Christmas, I bought a Vision Quest DVD. I failed to notice the "R" Rating or otherwise recall the "romantic" aspects of the movie. Other than that, it was fun to introduce my son to this great movie from my generation!
"Lights go out and I can't be saved
Tides that I tried to swim against
Have brought be down upon my knees
Oh I beg, I beg and plead..."
You can pull a hammy.
>
What, even doing a solo?!
Song of the Sea
Blue Crush
Finding Nemo
Apocalypse Now or William Friedkin's Sorcerer ;-)
Especially as a solo. I'm into the rough stuff.
I remember watching Rudy on the bus to an NCAA meet in college, I told my Coach-" wow, I am so inspired I think I need to transfer to Notre Dame!" - oh the bus trips :-)
I LOVE the movie the Legend of Bagger Vance, I still love to watch that before a big meet or swim. I don't know why but so many of the lines transfer to swimming. And it reminds me of my biggest fan my Dad- who still comes to everything to cheer me on!
David W, I hope you found some inspiration and had a great race and a new story to tell.
Thank you all for the great suggestions. I was planning on watching several movies, but was very busy with work and other stuff. I am also doing a 20 bridges relay in August and now have plenty of time to catch up on all of these great ideas. On youtube, I found an 8 minute clip of some of the inspirational moments from various films condensed, which was great. One of them was a blindfolded football player crawling down the filed and carrying another player on his back. The coach kept yelling "don't give up!" and when he finally collapsed, he took off the blindfold to discover he was across the goal line on the other end of the field. I thought of that as I buried my head down and swam hard and tried not to look for the bridge too often. The great speech from Rudy was also in that clip as well. In the end, I went with "Miracle", one of my favorites. The Herb Brooks locker room speech is great. "Tonight, we are the greatest team in the world ... we will beat them because we CAN!" . At certain times in the swim, I remember thinking "why am I doing this?" Because I CAN! (corny, I know, but we all need something in those times). Other highlights from the youtube readers digest versions - various Rocky quotes. "Its not how hard you hit that matters, its how hard you get hit and keep going!" and "when you step into the ring, you are fighting yourself, and you will emerge stronger - the opponent is just in the way"
Bleed For This......It's the story of professional boxer Vinny Pazienza's comeback from a brutal car accident. Especially inspiring for anyone fighting to comeback from a major injury, maybe more so than.. inspiration night before a big swim. Great movie
Thanks @EOD
I didn't know they did a movie about him. It is hard to believe it has been more than 25 years since his accident. I loved watching the Pazmanian Devil during his comeback. I don't think I need a big swim to check this one out.