It’s not every day that the a sports page has a fascinating article about the brain, but yesterday’s New York Times piece on a woman who became an “ultra-runner” after having part of her brain removed certainly fits the bill.
The runner, 49-year-old Diane Van Deren of Colorado, had part of her temporal lobe removed to bring her epileptic seizures to an end. Now she competes in races of 100 miles or more, boosted in part by short-term memory problems that keep her from tracking how long she has been running and how far she has gone.
She also has trouble remembering where she is going and where she has been, and she can no longer read maps. Her family starts to worry only when she has been gone for 24 hours.
The next time my alarm clock rings at a too-early hour so I can go on a 20-minute jog around my neighborhood, I’ll think twice before grumbling.
—Dan Gordon
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