By Chris Tuohy
In the last flyer, I talked about music and how it can stimulate senses and memories. For our runs, we have our favorite songs and playlists that remind and inspire us about past great races and experiences. It is amazing how powerful and easily one’s neural connections recall those episodes and transmit
those emotional events. It is seamless to link a personal event to a song, what happened, and then be able to remember the exact year of the song through that nexus. But ask us to remember a birthdate, and many of have instant amnesia (your smartphone, however, now solves that problem).
These are the same mental tricks the ancient Greeks and Romans used to link thoughts to locations in a building. The term, called a “memory palace,” was legendarily invented by Simonides of Ceos and popularized by Cicero, a Roman orator. The technique links data to places in a building for rapid and better recall. Interestingly, we do this instinctively and without deliberation with music, memories, and related emotions. I love the feelings from my childhood when
I hear songs that my dad played like “Cat’s in the Cradle,” “ High- wayman,” and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Evita.” But other songs also remind me of painful things, too, like break-ups and other personal losses.
The greatest beauty of music is the way it paints and adds sound to our life. And those sounds can be so unique. Unfortunately, one of the most innovative and inventive creators of my youth, Eddie Van
Halen, recently died. He created original sounds on his guitar with a technical style that popularized a new direction for rock and roll guitarists. I am not a musician, but it was fascinating to read the accolades from so many of his talented contemporaries that were influenced by him. So, his passing inspired me to create a new run- ning playlist with songs that blew me away the first time I heard a particular guitar riff, bass line, or drum solo. Enjoy and let me know
yours, too (for my fellow slackers, if your playlist came from a Maxell cassette “mix” tape played in a Walkman, that is even better!).
Crazy Train-Ozzy Osbourne
Kashmir-Led Zeppelin
Bizarre Love Triangle-New Order Where the Streets Have No Name-U2 Bangarang-Skrillex
Cherry-coloured Funk-Cocteau Twins
Biko-Peter Gabriel
Born to Run-Bruce Springsteen
Lose Yourself-Eminem
Down Rodeo-Rage against the Machine
Song 2-Blur
Jump into the Fire-Metallica Bird Set Free-Sia
Give it Away-Red Hot Chili Peppers
When Doves Cry-Prince
Head like a Hole-Nine Inch Nails
Brain Stew-Green Day
Ball and Biscuit-The White Stripes
In the Air Tonight-Phil Collins
And, of course —Unchained-Van Halen