Today’s run: 5.6 miles, 1:02 min. YT: 86.5 miles. Little energy to speak of until mile four. But that’s alright. I let my body and mind relax, and I saw a lot of exotic dogs. We can’t be a coked up David Bowie circa 1973 on every single run.

Dr. Drew runs to fire up his creativity, too. From Runner’s World:

I wrote almost an entire book while I was running. I can free associate while I run, so I wrote the book Cracked almost entirely while running. Judith Regan, who was the editor and publisher of the book, sort of challenged me to come up with stories. So I went on a run and brought a tape recorder with me. You get into a different mindset when you are running. I would just tell these stories that ended up being the foundation of the book I was writing. I have more spontaneous and interesting thoughts out there, so I would dictate them and then I would transcribe them at home. But the actual story, the things I was saying, I had to run to get my mind in the right place to be that creative and spontaneously trust what was coming out of my head. I’m better at it now because I have written a bit since then, but then I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ve never been in a spontaneously creative process before and the running really helped with that.

I like my method better: A series of mnemonic cues storied in a list in the back of my brain that I regurgitate onto a pad the moment I get home. It’s possible that if I carried a recorder I’d get much more written. But I really don’t like to verbalize my mental scribbles, until they’re written down. It tends to bring them down like a Jenga tower.

Note that Murakami, in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, says that he rarely gets anything on his runs that would be usable in a book. I think he’s a much more intuitive, gut-level writer. That’s probably because he is GENIUS.

Has anyone read the doc’s book, Cracked? And do you have useful, actionable thoughts, revelations, or insights while running, or do you prefer to zone out?