Friday, March 23, 2007

Wile E. Coyote, Super-Genius


At our household we receive news from the future. On Tuesday March 23rd the March 26th edition of Newsweek magazine appeared in our mailbox. It's kind of like that show where the guy always got his newspaper a day ahead of time. I'm still trying to figure out a way to make myself rich with all my advance knowledge. But, I suppose that would involve actually reading the magazine. For, even though my name's on the cover, I never read it. My lovely wife does, and sometimes she even shares interesting stories with me.

Next week's edition has a story about the relationship between exercise and the brain. The long and the short of it is that researchers think regular exercise makes you smarter.

The process starts in the muscles. Every time a bicep or quad contracts and releases, it sends out chemicals, including a protein called IGF-1 that travels through the bloodstream, across the blood-brain barrier and into the brain itself...[John] Ratey, author of the upcoming book "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," calls this molecule "Miracle-Gro for the brain." It fuels almost all the activities that lead to higher thought.


While we cyclists are notoriously weak and spindly in the upper body, our quads do quite a bit of work. According to this, I should be figuring out how to cure cancer or something. So why is it I can still walk into a room and forget why I went there in the first place?

Date: March 16
Mileage: 24
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
March mileage: 136
Year to date mileage: 737

Date: March 19
Mileage: 26
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
March mileage: 162
Year to date mileage: 763

Date: March 21
Mileage: 24
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
March mileage: 186
Year to date mileage: 787

Date: March 22
Mileage: 26
Ride type/Bike: Commute/Schwinn
March mileage: 212
Year to date mileage: 813

4 comments:

Sparky said...

Ah, me amigo. Genius you see, has nothing to do with common sense. Or short term memory. In fact, the smarter we get, the less room that's left for mundane daily things. Soon you'll be forgetting to take off your bike helmet at the end of rides, and leaving frozen pizzas in the oven overnight at 425.

Frostbike said...

So that means that genius and common sense have an inverse relationship. That explains a lot about the Hiawatha rides.

rigtenzin said...

Are you saying you see lots of common sense on the HC rides?

Frostbike said...

You can take it any way you wish...