Infinity's a Great Place to Start

Does Mozart Save Lives?

It has been said that listening to classical music can make babies smarter, but now scientists are suggesting that Mozart's symphonies could actually save lives. Japanese researchers claim that listening to performances of Mozart's works and Verdi's La Traviata opera improved the outlook for mice undergoing heart transplants. Compared with monotone sounds, Verdi and Mozart significantly prolonged transplant organ survival, in some cases more than doubling it. However, new age music by Enya had no effect. Whether music could influence organ rejection in humans is unknown.

Running at 3 a.m. -- The Few, The Proud, The Crazy?

When Adam Reitz doesn't feel like waking up at 3:30 a.m. for his daily run, he reaches out for his phone and looks at the picture that changed his life.

Most days he doesn't need to reach for the phone. The image of himself 100 pounds heavier is engraved in his mind, as are the feelings associated with that picture.

Cross-Training -- Is it Blasphemy for Runners?

A wise runner once said, "The hardest thing for a runner to do is not run."

For me, truer words were never spoken. For more than two months, I continued to run despite suffering from a torn meniscus in my right knee. Sure, there was a little pain and discomfort in the knee when I ran, but isn't a little pain what running is all about? So, like most hard-headed, addicted-to-endorphins runners, I continued running - as much as 10 miles some days.

A Little Music to Run By

Chrissie Wellington's Rapid Rise

THIS time last year Chrissie Wellington was an adviser to David Miliband at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She did triathlons in the time she had free from writing briefs on international development.

Miliband has climbed the political pole since to become Foreign Secretary but his rise to Gordon Brown's right-hand man is nothing to the stratospheric leap his former adviser has made in the world of triathlon.

Western States 100 -- This Ain't Jogging

Somewhere out near the limit to human endurance you will find the Western States 100. It is billed as an endurance "race" of 100 miles, but clearly race is not the right term. The annual June run, from Squaw Valley over the rugged crests and valleys of the Sierra, is more like a carefully organized ordeal, a deliberate decision to push one's body and mind to (and in some cases beyond) the breaking point.

Hallucinations are not uncommon. Most participants lose many, if not all, of their toenails. Falls are common. Blood flows. Participants give in to despair and anguish over their ability to go on. And when they finish, often looking like near death, they sometimes collapse in an emotional heap and may need days, or weeks, to get back to normal.

Get the picture? This ain't jogging.

Running Just Kind of Snuck Up on Me

MAYBE IT'S MY farmer blood, but athletics was not a word I grew up with. We swam in the ocean, but that was really just jumping around in the waves. Hiking was acceptable, because that was Nature, which involved admiring the view and recognizing birds and plants and mountain ranges.

But athletics - the idea of spending an afternoon playing tennis or soccer, and even worse, in uniform (Raver 16) - well, the unspoken feeling in our family was that this was frivolous. If you were going to go out and sweat and build muscles, why not bring the hay in at the same time? Or build a new pighouse?

So when a friend talked me into running the "Dreaded Winter Series," six short races that weave about Middle Island in January and February, my parents were rather nonplussed.

"Aren't you a little old for that?" asked Dad, who's 81. Running, in his view, is something children do, and refrigerators, if they're GE.

Quieting the Inner Critic

Many of us have a critical inner voice. It may not be unforgiving, but it's enough to make us unhappy, sometimes profoundly so, even when we know we've got everything going for us – an interesting job, a loving family, good health. And we try to talk our way out of the doldrums, often with a voice as harsh as Jeremy's.

"We ask ourselves, 'What have I got to be depressed about?'" says Williams. "'What's wrong with me? Snap out of it.' It's a brooding loop. Mindfulness gives us the resources to step outside that loop. It teaches us to objectify our thoughts for what they are: just thoughts. You don't have to argue with them, just notice them." The same applies to memories.

"If you think of the mind as the sky, then negative thoughts are dark clouds. It's about learning to be with that weather, and not blaming yourself for it. It's about seeing the mind's patterns more clearly – and not taking them personally – and finding a place of stillness within yourself where the storm is not raging."