The American statesman Ben Franklin once wrote “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.  There may be something to that with respect to our running performance. We sleep, on average a full one third of our lives.  So, as a middle aged, middle of the pack, slightly asthmatic 48 year old runner: I’ve already slept 16 years of my life away.  It seems like an unfair trade off: 16 years of my life that I could have spent in a conscious state of productivity…but when we consider that the time spent sleeping helps to improve the quality of the two thirds of our life when we are awake: it’s easy to see that the horizontal investment is a sound one.
Links:
http://www.runningresearchnews.com/News_Feed.php
http://www.rrca.org/services/news-entry/running-community-mourns-loss-of-mike-broderick/
http://www.audiblepodcast.com/phedi
http://www.teamsweat.org
http://educatingforjustice.org  
The song “Slow Down” was by Black Lab off their new album: “Two Strangers” available on iTunes, Amazon MP3 and at http://blacklabworld.com