I found these online and thought they were hilarious. I gave a copy to the team today. I identify with most of these!
You might be a cross country runner if ...
Your shoes have more miles on them than you car does.
You run farther in a week than your bus travels for meets.
Your dog can’t keep up with you on runs.
You combine phrases like "10 Mile" and "Easy Run" in the same breath.
You can eat your weight in spaghetti.
You spend more on training clothes than school clothes.
You wear those same training clothes to school reguarly.
You carry a water bottle with you everywhere you go.
You're running in your dreams.
Your underwear covers more than your running shorts
The most enjoyable time you've had all month is a day off from practice
Your coach won’t give you a ride home
Your temper is shorter than the distance you ran
Your Christmas list includes mostly running apparel and shoes
The mile in P.E. becomes your warm-up
You wake up every morning in pain
Your Saturdays for the next 4 years are ruined
You get a Saturday off, plan to sleep in…but wake up at 4:30 itching to run anyway
You can maintain a 5:30 pace uphill while throwing up.
You try to impress girls by saying you're a fast finisher.
You consider school as just a break between runs.
You always stretch while waiting in the lunch line.
Your room smells like Icy-Hot and New-Skin.
Runner's World provides you with more pin-ups than Playboy
Steve Prefontaine's Birthday is more important than yours
You know as many kinds of pain as eskimos have words for snow
You don’t know what “off-season” means
You find yourself saying “it’s not really a hill”
Your feet are comparable to rawhide
You’re running and you don’t know why anymore
Your friends refer to you as ‘the masochist’
You talk to your coach more than your parents
You run the day after State
You haven’t had a soda in 6 months
You can hallucinate and get high without taking anything
You wake up in the morning and find that you are already running
Your heart rate is below 50 and you’re not dying
Talking about the color of you pee is as natural as talking about the weather
You don’t laugh everytime you hear ‘fartlek’
You have less than 5% body fat but you’re not from Somalia
You feel 1 second is a lot of time
You use the odometer in your car for clocking runs, not gas millage
You know more about your body than most non-sports doctors
You wish your school had an oversees program in Kenya
You know the precise lengths of every piece of road within 20 miles of your house
You know why they call quads quads because you can count all 4 of yours
Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Friday, September 16, 2011
Fun Nervous System Trivia + Spiritual Reflections
My Anatomy class just finished the Nervous System so I thought I'd share some fun trivia. I honestly don't understand how anyone who knows anything about the human body can deny the existence of a Creator or deny His genius. In just the study of how we work, so many spiritual truths can be learned.
-there are no pleasure sensor cells, there are ones for pain, heat, cold, touch, etc. but pleasure is only experienced from the cooperation of many cells. When you experience pain, only the pain receptors and the cells in pain experience it. When you experience pleasure, every cell in your body changes; they are bathed in hormones and enzymes. It's the same for us isn't it. How much pleasure can you experience alone? We were designed to live in community and we have the most fun when we can cooperate together.
-your eardrum can detect a sound frequency that vibrates it at only 1/billionth of 1 cm (that’s 1/10th the diameter of a hydrogen atom). If our ears were any more sensitive, we would hear the movement of air molecules around us as a constant wooshing sound. And people think you can't hear the voice of God, please!
-A single nerve cell has 1000’s of synapses(junctions) with other neurons. A brain neuron can have as many as 80,000. 1 cubic mm of brain matter contains 1 billion synaptic connections. 5 trillion chemical operations occur in you brain every second. If our little brains can handle 5 trillion operations, God can handle all 6 billion people on the planet praying at once. Suddenly it doesn't seem that inconceivable does it?
-Each second 100 million sensory messages get sent to the brain. Of these, only a few hundred are deemed important and are admitted. So how does your brain decide what's important? It has to do with what your attention is on. Think about it: when you're sitting in a class, your brain knows to admit info like what you hear the teacher saying and what you see on the board, but it doesn't bother with admitting info like what color shirt the person next to you is wearing, even though you see it. That's why we should "focus on things above." When we do, we notice more of what God is doing because that is the info that our brain receives. When we focus on our junk, thats what we experience most. When people say they don't see God at work, it's not because He's not; they just aren't in the brain state to notice. It's why we are "transformed by the renewing of our mind."
-The mind so thrives on stimulation, if you were to cut off stimulation, it would quickly start hallucinating to fill the void, after a few hours, most people would go insane. You were designed to experience this world. You were designed for an abundant life.
-Taste buds only live 3-5 days. If it's been a week since you last had an orange, and you eat an orange, how do you know it tastes like past oranges? Well all your memories of taste lie in the brain, not the tongue. Similiarly, this body passes away but the experience, the memories, the thoughts will not. We are eternal.
-Pain receptors can change the intensity of their signal depending on how much pain they think you can handle that day. God will never give you more than you can handle. He even designed your body to do likewise.
-there are no pleasure sensor cells, there are ones for pain, heat, cold, touch, etc. but pleasure is only experienced from the cooperation of many cells. When you experience pain, only the pain receptors and the cells in pain experience it. When you experience pleasure, every cell in your body changes; they are bathed in hormones and enzymes. It's the same for us isn't it. How much pleasure can you experience alone? We were designed to live in community and we have the most fun when we can cooperate together.
-your eardrum can detect a sound frequency that vibrates it at only 1/billionth of 1 cm (that’s 1/10th the diameter of a hydrogen atom). If our ears were any more sensitive, we would hear the movement of air molecules around us as a constant wooshing sound. And people think you can't hear the voice of God, please!
-A single nerve cell has 1000’s of synapses(junctions) with other neurons. A brain neuron can have as many as 80,000. 1 cubic mm of brain matter contains 1 billion synaptic connections. 5 trillion chemical operations occur in you brain every second. If our little brains can handle 5 trillion operations, God can handle all 6 billion people on the planet praying at once. Suddenly it doesn't seem that inconceivable does it?
-Each second 100 million sensory messages get sent to the brain. Of these, only a few hundred are deemed important and are admitted. So how does your brain decide what's important? It has to do with what your attention is on. Think about it: when you're sitting in a class, your brain knows to admit info like what you hear the teacher saying and what you see on the board, but it doesn't bother with admitting info like what color shirt the person next to you is wearing, even though you see it. That's why we should "focus on things above." When we do, we notice more of what God is doing because that is the info that our brain receives. When we focus on our junk, thats what we experience most. When people say they don't see God at work, it's not because He's not; they just aren't in the brain state to notice. It's why we are "transformed by the renewing of our mind."
-The mind so thrives on stimulation, if you were to cut off stimulation, it would quickly start hallucinating to fill the void, after a few hours, most people would go insane. You were designed to experience this world. You were designed for an abundant life.
-Taste buds only live 3-5 days. If it's been a week since you last had an orange, and you eat an orange, how do you know it tastes like past oranges? Well all your memories of taste lie in the brain, not the tongue. Similiarly, this body passes away but the experience, the memories, the thoughts will not. We are eternal.
-Pain receptors can change the intensity of their signal depending on how much pain they think you can handle that day. God will never give you more than you can handle. He even designed your body to do likewise.
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
The Art of Designing a Workout
One of the pillars of my Cross Country team’s training is a weekly conditioning workout that incorporates everything from plyometrics to gymnastics to bleachers to holds. And the are brutal. These are the workouts that set us apart from the other sports at my school. It is these workouts that have made other students, teachers, and coaches take notice. They are the reason we are respected as a sport. And the runners have a love-hate relationship with them. These workouts hurt. They require mental toughness. They turn boys into men. They are the reason I am called ‘mean’, ‘cruel,’ and ‘sadistic.’ New runners think I’m crazy, but it doesn’t take long for them to see their value. These are the days that teach a kid how strong he really is, how much he can endure; these are the workouts that bring confidence.
My veteran runners have caught on to this and are now asking to design one of our workouts, which they submit to me for approval. And though their workouts might not hit the right muscle groups in the right order for that day or may be too long; I have to say I’m impressed. I realized today, my coaching is teaching kids how to coach themselves. I’ve promised them we will do their workouts at some point this season. The kids loved writing a workout and I’m not surprised. This is one of my favorite coaching tasks. I get to be creative, use problem solving, address certain weaknesses. I get a sense of accomplishment when a design goes according to plan. I love the challenge of it. And I can honestly say our weekly conditioning is one of the main reasons we are undefeated so far this season.
My veteran runners have caught on to this and are now asking to design one of our workouts, which they submit to me for approval. And though their workouts might not hit the right muscle groups in the right order for that day or may be too long; I have to say I’m impressed. I realized today, my coaching is teaching kids how to coach themselves. I’ve promised them we will do their workouts at some point this season. The kids loved writing a workout and I’m not surprised. This is one of my favorite coaching tasks. I get to be creative, use problem solving, address certain weaknesses. I get a sense of accomplishment when a design goes according to plan. I love the challenge of it. And I can honestly say our weekly conditioning is one of the main reasons we are undefeated so far this season.
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