Where's that montage music?

There's a certain scene that you'll find in every underdog-rises-to-become-a-champion sports movie. You know the scene I'm talking about. After the player/team has sucked for a while and it looks like he/she/they will never amount to a hill of beans, everything starts coming together. Practices start going well, and people start doing things right: they make the big plays, win games, and show actual competence. It's The Turnaround Scene. Suitably uplifting music shows our hero or heroes improving by leaps and bounds, and weeks or months of hard training and work are compressed into a bunch of two-second shots that leave the protagonists grinning and giving each other high-fives by the end of the montage. The viewer can clearly see that the formerly mediocre-but-lovable dolts have put in the hard work and are on their way to becoming buff, competent champions.

Here's a prime example that speaks to many runners from Rocky:


I've been (officially) training for the half marathon for two months now, and I've got three and a half months to go. So far the Amanda Trains For A Half-Marathon movie has been a pretty dull slog. I've gotten somewhat faster (I am now merely "slow" as opposed to "glacial") but still have no idea what's going to happen when those 8-milers and 10-milers start popping up on the schedule.

Here's another good turnaround scene from that 1976 classic, The Bad News Bears. Be patient--it's about five minutes into the clip:


No discussion of this phenomenon would be complete without the turnaround montage (clever use of newspaper headlines here!) from that most wonderful of underdogs-become-champs movies, Major League (the music starts at 1:50 in):


Here's a more obscure Turnaround Scene involving the sport of curling--yes, I said curling. Note the happy music, the people clapping, and the Good Guys racking up the wins. (Yes, a movie has been made about curling! It's Canadian and stars the very hunky Paul Gross.) I can't embed the video here, but I can link you to it:
Men With Brooms clip where they turn it around and start winning
You can also legally watch the whole movie here if you're so inclined.

I probably could have run outside today, but I still felt a little off-kilter from being an idiot and running on Sunday. A nice easy run on the gerbil wheel seemed like a smart move. I didn't even separate out my warmup time, so I hit 3.0 miles at a very leisurely 36:26. Hopefully I'll feel like kicking it back up a notch on Thursday.

WHERE IS MY MONTAGE MUSIC?! Is this why so many people wear iPods while they run??

Of course, there is no oh-look-she's-getting-so-wonderfully-competent montage in real life. Just more slogging and inching your way forward.