Runners are known for being a little fixated in their approach to things. Okay, preoccupied. Okay, I admit, fanatical.

I've always sought to achieve a good sense of balance with running but there is no point in attempting to hide what is now painfully obvious. Somewhere between running my first 10K and my child turning six years old, I've become culturally illiterate. Reverse evolution.

My road to awareness (or my lack thereof) all began when my six year old son asked me a few questions about Pocahontas. I knew she was a Native American but that just set me on equal footing with my son. After my lack of an adequate response, he next shifted his inquiries to a Mr. Smith.

I felt a little surge of confidence, as I knew a lot of famous Mr. Smiths. Heck, there was Tommie Smith, the gold medalist at the 1968 Olympics and Geoff Smith who won back to back Boston Marathon titles in 1984 and '85 as well as Tracy Smith the former indoor world record holder for three miles.

My son informs me that he is inquiring about a John Smith who was associated with Pocahontas. My momentary feeling of certitude is abruptly erased. Suddenly, I began to realize that my problem is not that I had brain depletion but, rather, too much time spent reading about glycogen depletion. I am well versed in the subjects of running but it is that big vast world beyond lactic acid buildup that I've apparently lost a little contact with over the years.

My spare reading material had concerned itself more with knowing famous Tanzanian female 800 meter runners rather than refreshing my knowledge of famous Civil War generals. I know a lot more about VO2 max and the past winners of the New York City Marathon than I know about trigonometry or previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize.

My mind is a virtual warehouse of insignificant running related trivia. Accumulating this wealth of running knowledge had now apparently pushed out the more redeeming data. A slow and steady erosion of my scholarly soil had produced diminished crops.

The old info escaping from my memory bank wasn't that Alvin Kraenzlein won four Olympic gold medals in 1900. Oh, I've retained that bit of erudite information and instead lost the knowledge as to what the heck was the Monroe Doctrine or who William Jennings Bryan was.

I can provide the entire resume for Lynn Jennings's cross- country running career, but, in the category of American politicians, apparently Mr. Jennings Bryan is a forgettable fact. I know a lot more about Bullet Bob Hayes than President Rutherford B. Hayes.

I figured Pocahontas must have been pushed out of my memory space when I was also filing away the important knowledge that Gerry Lindgren won the NCAA Cross-Country Championship for Washington State in 1967, '69 and '70. Why couldn't my son want to know about him?

Slowly I begin to recognize that balance is the key to it all. I recognize that running requires the balance of hard days, easy days, speedwork, and long distance. I needed to balance in a little educational tune-up to my penchant for running related topics.

I now try to scan the encyclopedia (children's version) when I have a free moment. I tend to gravitate toward the Olympic Games section. I'm working through it though.

I've even learned some new things. Like, at the 1908 Olympics in London, the marathon distance was changed from 24.85 to 26 miles to cover the ground from Windsor Castle to White City stadium, with 385 yards added on so the race could finish in front of King Edward VII's royal box. I only hope that someday my children will want this critical piece of information.

When the questions from my kids are a little more significant than what year did Abebe Bikila win his first gold medal in the marathon, I do what any normal American man does whose fixation on a particular sport has reduced his intellectual retentive abilities.

I tell them, "Why don't you go ask your mother that one."