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."

Warren Kay and the Sacred Art of Running

It's not that Warren A. Kay sees God lurking among the bushes during his morning jogs.

But for this longtime distance runner, running and spirituality are inseparable. So connected are the two, says the Merrimack College theology professor, that one can actually "experience the divine in the physicality of running" and have a conversation with God while on the track.

Allow him to explain.

Incline Training

Benefits of Incline Training

1. Greater heart rates: Research shows that  walking only two mph at a 24% incline yields greater heart rates than running six mph at zero incline. Meaning that incline training is a highly effective way to get in shape and train your heart, without painful joint impact and jarring.

Three Minute Mile?

ONE thing is certain about an athletics world record... it will always be broken.

As athletes become ever fitter and as coaches discover new tweaks to techniques, even feats once deemed insurmountable are surpassed.

'Close to its perfection point'

The Hardrock 100 -- A Taste

The instructions for the Hardrock 100 Endurance Run are easy to sum up but hard to pull off.

"If you see a mountain in front of you, climb it," race director Dale Garland told 140 runners gathered at the starting line earlier this month. "If you see a snowfield, go down it. If you see a creek, cross it ... And remember the No. 1 rule, no whining."

Raw Honey is Another Elixir

Raw honey is more than just a natural sweetener. Honey has a variety of uses in your beauty regimen and for medicinal purposes.Raw honey, which is not pasteurized or refined, can be especially useful because of its nutritional properties.Although you may have heard about the benefits of raw honey, you might be surprised at some of the creative ways it can be used:

Eight new ways to use raw honey

Healthy Body, Healthy Mind

A new study has proved an old saying 'healthy mind lives in a healthy body'.

Researchers from University of Gothenburg in Sweden have revealed that regular exercise boosts brain power of young adults.

It improves blood flow to the brain that could help build new brain cells.

Do Running Shoes Hurt Our Feet?

The world's runners spend $25 billion a year on shoes with ever more hi-tech gizmos designed to help them go faster and further ... but they could be hurting more than their wallet

AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY, California, two sales representatives from Nike were watching the athletics team practise. Part of their job was to gather feedback from the company's sponsored runners about which shoes they preferred. Unfortunately, it was proving difficult that day as the runners all seemed to prefer... nothing. "Didn't we send you enough shoes?" they asked head coach Vin Lananna

They had, he was just refusing to use them. "I can't prove this," the respected coach told them. "But I believe that when my runners train barefoot they run faster and suffer fewer injuries." Nike sponsored the Stanford team as they were the best of the very best

Train Like Jane

When it's workout time at Core Fitness Chicago, out comes the sledgehammer. And the 80-pound bag of mulch. And the 2010 Jeep Grand Cherokee for pushing across a rooftop parking lot while someone steps lightly on the brake.

Don't even bother looking for a treadmill.

If such exercise sounds ambitiously modern, it's not; those tools are meant to imitate the way humans stayed healthy 10,000 years ago.

Men's Muscles and Sexual Selection

Sexual selection and men’s muscles

The price and privilege of beefcake

WHY are men’s muscles so much bigger than women’s?

Partly, of course, because men do the fighting and hunting. But also, perhaps, because women like men who can do these things well, and are thus attracted to muscular men. Both phenomena--competing with members of the same sex and showing off to members of the opposite--are subject to a form of evolution known as sexual selection. It is sexual selection that created the deer’s antlers and the peacock’s tail, and William Lassek of the University of Pittsburgh and Steven Gaulin of the University of California, Santa Barbara, think it explains men’s muscles as well.

Marathons: Recovery is Variable

Recovery Is Littered With Variables

I ran my first marathon this month. It went well, and despite my fears, I had fun. I met my goals - qualified for the Boston Marathon with nearly half an hour to spare and came in second in my age group. But the big surprise was my coach's advice the next day.

It will take four weeks to fully recover, he told me. That seemed like an awfully long time.

Pat Farmer and the 21,000-kilometre Pole-to-Pole Run

PAT FARMER has dodged polar bears, evaded rogue militias and braved snow blizzards during a 21,000-kilometre run from the North Pole to the South Pole to raise funds for the Red Cross.

The former federal Liberal MP and intrepid athlete has returned to Sydney after running through 14 countries and raising almost $100,000.

Icing: Good or Bad?

Several years ago a team of Japanese researchers put a dozen college-aged men on exercise bicycles for four to six weeks of training. Following each workout, the research subjects stuck one limb in an ice bath at temperatures ranging from 5 degrees C to 10 degrees C (41 degrees F to 50 degrees F). The other limb stayed at room temperature, allowing everyone to serve as his or her own control.

The goal was to find out how much ice baths contributed to building fitness. The results were eye-opening.

For decades, post-workout ice baths have been a rite of passage for high school and college athletes. The theory was that if ice works for sprained ankles, it should also speed recovery from hard workouts, since these too involve tissue damage.

64-Year-Old Hitting His Stride

He looks like he has discovered a cure for aging. His body is taut. His smile is bright and wide. And at 64, Tom Pontac shows no outward signs of slowing down. Literally.

For Pontac became a newlywed last year, graduated from college in the spring and now plans to train as many of his new neighbors as he can to do what he loves most: run marathons.

Heel Strike: More Efficient for Walking?

Humans, other great apes and bears are among the few animals that step first on the heel when walking, and then roll onto the ball of the foot and toes. Now, a University of Utah study shows the advantage: Compared with heel-first walking, it takes 53 percent more energy to walk on the balls of your feet, and 83 percent more energy to walk on your toes.

Megan Stewart Focusing on the Next Rock

Losing toenails, hallucinating from exhaustion and blistered feet raw to the bone may sound like a form of torture, but it's just a small part of running 250km through one of the driest places in the world. Sam Scannell reports.

Exercise: Are You Longing for the Next Hit?

EXPERTS agree exercise is good for us. It can even be addictive, with those hooked constantly looking for the next hit.

Most of us have a healthy approach to exercise and a good balance of mind, body and spirit, but there are those for whom exercise becomes a deadly addiction.