As a long-distance cyclist, I know I can ride 150 miles and listen to 13-14 hours of lectures, which is about the space my iPod takes up. In fact, I have to listen to lectures that don’t have video because that eats up the amount of playback time the device can keep up with. Remember that I need more than 13 full hours to finish my trip. Yes, I have a little backup iPod but it only has music, which is good for finishing in the last 50 miles anyway, but that time one is kind of crazy, especially if there are a lot of hills to travel.

Running a 50K (31 mile) workout, the lectures will have you clicking for hours without feeling all the pain, and that’s a good thing. Well, truth be told, it’s not all good. Let me explain some of the drawbacks of listening to lectures while doing resistance training or racing, I have three main complaints:

1. Introduction

2. Monotonous

3. Pay attention

4. No visual aids to look

First the introduction, this is where they introduce the guest speaker, many traveling lecture series, and really those are often the best, spend the first 5-10 minutes introducing the academic institution, then the chancellor, then the speaker and their o his long resume. Come on, just give me the info and an abbreviated biography of the speaker, that shouldn’t take more than a minute or so.

Second, some speakers have strong accents and while you’re running it makes it hard to follow, there’s nothing wrong with foreigners having the knowledge base, it’s just hard to understand them and you don’t know until you start. If you can’t hear, you have to stop and skip to another lesson, which breaks your rhythm.

Third, sometimes the topics, for example, quantum physics are hard to follow and pay attention to, remember when you are running trails you have to watch out for rocks in your path, your cadence and pay attention to the trail so you don’t you hit yourself, oh

Lastly, when you listen to lectures on an iPod without video, often the speakers refer to power points, short videos and pictures, pictures you can’t see and obviously can’t look at while biking at 22-25mph, and certainly can’t look at anything. but the trail in a trail race – head to head!

It is best to try to find speakers who speak in pictures and use few visual questions. Ted talks are good for this, as are authors giving speeches or book review talks. Please consider all this and think about it.