As longtime visitors to the DogS(h)ite know, I will never be smart.

Still, “never” is an awfully long time. Especially now that a study indicates that running “seems to require a greater amount of high-level thinking than most of us might imagine,” or so says Gretchen Reynolds in The New York Times.

The study, published in a neuroscience journal, found that the brains of competitive distance runners “had different connections in areas known to aid in sophisticated cognition than the brains of healthy but sedentary people,” Reynolds recounts, adding: “The discovery suggests that there is more to running than mindlessly placing one foot in front of another.”

Well. Shit. Naturally I laced up the old runners straight away and toddled off for my first jog of the winter.

And … nothing. Bupkis. Still as dumb as a stump.

Still, I’ll probably keep after it. At least running gets you out in the open air. Like crucifixion.