By Christopher Cudworth

They say that the left side of the brain controls the right, say that the right side has to work hard all night, maybe I think too much for my own good, some people say so, other people say no no, the fact is you don’t think, as much as you could…hmmm    –Paul Simon

We’re all in the driver’s seat of our own brains.

This must be the 165th or so post since this blog started, and every word has been fun to write. Some serious. Some not so. I think about these things a lot. How to run better. Ride better. What matters in life. Maybe I think too much.

Run and ride booms

When running was first becoming popular during the first of many running booms, people would ask, “Well, that’s all well and good. But what do you think about?”

“What don’t you think about?” was always my answer. Running was just that, a time to think. Don’t you need time to think? I do. We all need time to think. Cycling’s the same way. What, you’re going go out and run or ride to turn off your brain? Maybe. Maybe not.

Wiping out thought

Of course sometimes you are running or riding too hard to think about much. Then the only thing you can think to do is hang onto the wheel in front of you, or try to keep pace with the group.

Then you can start to think negative thoughts. Like, “I suck at this.” Well, guess what? Then you really are thinking too much.

Positive thinking

Photo from Dusty Musette. Cyclist Tyler Hamilton once rode the Tour de France with a broken collarbone, putting all negative thoughts and pain out of his mind.

Instead we all need to develop constructive thinking about our training and racing. Think positive thoughts. Billions of dollars are spent learning how to do this. So it must matter a lot.

But then you’re out in the middle of a race and a beer commercial tune starts running through your head for no damn reason at all. You’ve been struck by an ear worm, the worst kind of thought pattern there is.

My personal unfavorite for a while was an Amstel Light commercial: “25 calories…never tasted so imported…till they…imported Amstel Light.” Over and over. Mile after mile the earworm of that jingle ate at my brain as I raced along at 5:00 pace, trying to win. And I did. So who’s to say that kind of thinking is/was bad?

Dissociative thinking

This is called dissociative thinking. Thinking the abstract. And that can be good. If you know how to do it. Right.

At one time there were a whole bunch of theories about whether dissociative thinking was good for you as a distance athlete. Dissociative thinking is thinking about anything but the effort you are putting in. I don’t know that the experts arrived at any consensus thinking on the subject. They got so distracted thinking about dissociative thinking they probably forgot what they were supposed to be thinking about. I know I did. Which show you what dissociative thinking can do. It can be responsible for multiple personality disorders. Thinks like that. Like there’s two of you inside that noggin’. And I say, “That’s all?” There’s room in here for 5 or 6. Take a seat. Let’s ride together…”

Associative thinking

Associative thinking in some respects is focusing on the effort and the feedback you are getting from your training or racing. Things like pace, heartbeat, form and the like. It has been generally proposed that most world class athletes excel at associative thinking. But associative thinking is not always a limiting factor. It can lead to great insight and inspiration.

At one point in his marathoning career the great runner Bill Rodgers was leading the New York City Marathon and told himself, “I want to do this right.” He was so focused and in the moment that he was paying attention to everything he was doing. Refining his carriage and even the way he carried his hands. It was like a dance performance. Now that’s both associative and dissociative thinking combined.

As a creative director and copywriter, there have been so many times that I’ve gone out for a run and the thought processes converge on a great idea. A new campaign. The right words for a headline. The solution to the problem. Awesome!

So it’s not always so cut and dried. Our thought processes can be at once dreamy and productive.

Time out of mind

Sometimes this is all you see or think about. The road ahead. And tarsnakes of course.

Some of the best rides I’ve ever done have been completed only to realized I did not think about the riding at all. Didn’t even look up at the scenery around me, for that matter. Just barreled along at my chosen pace, hammering, as they call it.

When you get home from a ride like that it is tough to tell whether you’ve done the right thing or not. I mean, who’s going to go out for a ride and not look around them. I do. Lots of people do.

No room at the Inn

Sometimes you’re so absorbed in your own thoughts you don’t have the mental space to look around. Some work problem needs a solution, or a relationship challenge is riding along with you. You may be riding or running for miles and be so focused on those dissociative issues they actually become the run or ride. You are just a body carrying along a brain full of thoughts.

But maybe I think too much.

Have you ever experienced a period of grace, when you brain just takes a seat behind your face, and the world begins the Elephant Dance, everything’s funny, everyone’s sunny, you take our your money, (walk) down the road yeah…   –Paul Simon

Rhymes with…

I once took a psychological test of sorts with a genius named Dr. Paul Weilgart, an escapee from Nazi Germany who emigrated to America where his 231 IQ put him in the stratosphere when it came to thinking about his past and the future of mankind. He invented his own language, the Logos of Love, he called it, in which aggressive sounds were removed from the alphabet he created. That’s right, he wrote his own new alphabet.

Yet Dr. Weilgart was so smart it was hard for him to function. He was always thinking, you see. One time he reportedly drove his family to the mall in Rochester, a town 75 miles from Decorah, Iowa where he lived with his family. On the way into the mall he said to his family, “For Heavens Sake (he was always saying that) I have forgotten some’zing in ze car.” So he walked back to the vehicle, got in and drove home without his family. He’d forgotten them completely. Now that’s thinking too much.

Dr. Weilgart taught a course at Luther College about the language he’d invented. I never took that course, but I did enroll in a class he taught titled Psychology of Adjustment. One one point during the semester Dr. Weilgart administered rhyme tests to show us how our thought patterns worked. He would give you a sentence and ask you to finish it with a rhyming statement of some sort.

My sentence was, “The couple sat down to eat and drink….”

And I finished it this way, “It gave them time to talk and think.”

Dr. Weilgart looked me up and down and said, “For Heaven’s Sake, Mr. Cudworth. No wonder you are so skinny. You are talking and thinking when you should be eating!”

Running waif

Well, he was probably right. I weighed 140 lbs. on a 6’1″ frame. 3% body fat. 90 mile weeks. So skinny that a nurse measuring my BMI once told me, “Don’t get caught in the rain.”

Hmmm, I should think about that, I told myself at the time. Then went out with four other fellas to run 30 miles at 8:00 pace in 45 degree weather during a rainstorm.

So maybe I don’t think too much. We had a great time and I slept for six hours afterward.

I do not recall what I dreamt about during that sound daytime sleep. Exhausted and happy, my brain forgot all about thinking for a while. And maybe that’s why we run and ride, after all.

Shut it down.