Reflections on Haruki Murakami running book

I recently finished reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami. I have never been a great fan of Murakami’s books. Simply put, the kinds of stories he writes are usually not for me. But I have to confess that I loved this one and could not help finishing it in a short time.

The book, as it describes itself, is a memoir. Murakami brings together two things I also care about: writing and running, or sports in general. He tries to understand what running has meant to him as both a person and a writer, and he connects the two beautifully. The second half of the book focuses more directly on how he felt during the marathons and other races in which he participated. He writes that he runs thirty-six miles a week, six miles a day for six days each week. I also found a recent interview reporting that he had returned to running after recovering from a serious illness. At seventy-seven, that is very impressive, isn’t it?

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami

Placing a physical activity such as running beside mental work, then philosophizing about their relationship, may seem strange at first. As Murakami quotes Somerset Maugham, “In each shave lies a philosophy”. Murakami argues that thinking carefully about simple, apparently empty activities such as running, and writing about them phenomenologically, can help us discover many things about ourselves.

At first, I wanted to write extensively about the book. Then I realized that collecting the passages I loved would give readers a better sense of what stayed with me.

I also liked the way Murakami challenged himself with one major competition, a marathon or triathlon, each year. Setting a specific challenge and a clear goal matters, even when the larger purpose is simply to remain healthy. Another detail that stayed with me was that he began both writing and running at the age of thirty-three, the same age I am now. It felt like a signal to me, or at least I chose to treat it as one.

His decision to sell his bar and become a full-time writer impressed me as well. Other people suggested that he continue running the bar while writing, but he chose to commit fully only after proving to himself that he could publish a book. He tested the path before risking his livelihood, and once he had enough evidence, he gave the new profession his complete attention. I love this mindset. It combines the conservatism and courage that many professions require at the same time.

In short, I highly recommend reading this book, especially for people like me whose daily lives involve a great deal of intellectual work. It offers a good reason to consider a similar physical practice and to think more carefully about the repeated actions that shape our days.

Now, without further ado, here are the passages I loved most from the book:

• Somerset Maugham: In each shave lies a philosophy.

• No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act.

• I can’t grasp much of anything without putting down my thoughts in writing.

• If you don’t keep repeating a mantra of some sort to yourself, you’ll never survive (in running a marathon).

• Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.

• The point is to let exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can run (or write) more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly.

• To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long term projects.

• I am not fan of team sports and I am much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself.

• In writing profession, there is no such thing as winning or losing.

• Writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike.

• I find spending an hour or two every day running alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring. I could always think things to do by myself.

• An occasionally, hardly ever, really, I get an idea to use in a novel (while running).

• I just run. I run in a void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.

• I am a kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do. I knew that if I did things halfheartedly, and they didn’t workout, I’d always have regrets.

• This was because these were forced on me from above. I never could stand being forced to do something I didn’t want to do at a time I didn’t want to do it. Whenever I was able to do something I liked to do, though, when I wanted to do it, and the way I wanted to do it, I’d give it everything I had.

• I got up before five a.m. and went to bed before ten p.m. I am definitely a morning person.

• The toughest part of a marathon comes after twenty-two miles.

• The only way to understand what’s really fair is to take a long-range view of things.

• I think I’ve been able to run for more than twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me. Or at least because I don’t find it all that painful.

• Whenever I feel like I don’t want to run, I always ask myself the same thing: You’re able to make a living as a novelist, working at home, setting your own hours, so you don’t have to commute on a packed train or sit through boring meetings. Don’t you realize how fortunate you are?

• Whenever I picture packed trains and endless meetings, this gets me motivated all over again and I lace up my running shoes and set off without any qualms.

• That’s how I started running. thirty-three- that’s how old I was then. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill.

• One other way I keep healthy is by taking a nap. I really nap a lot.

• Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose.

• No matter how much you might command your body to perform, don’t count on it to immediately obey. The body is an extremely practical system. You have to let it experience intermittent pain over time, and then the body will get the point.

• The point is to reach the peak of exhaustion about a month before the race, so this is critical period.

• I am following one of my basic rules for training: I never take two days off in a row. Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the update. If you carefully increase the load, step by step, they learn to take it. As long as you explain your expectations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to endure, your muscles will comply and gradually get stronger. It doesn’t happen overnight, of course.

• If, however, the load stops for a few days, the muscles automatically assume they don’t have to work that hard anymore, and they lower their limits.

• what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent

• If I’m asked what the next most important quality is for a novelist, that’s easy too: focus –the ability to concentrate all the limited talent on whatever’s critical at the moment.

• After focus, the next most important for a novelist is, hands down, endurance.

• Writing novels, to me, is basically a kind of manual labor.

• Most of what I know about writing I’ve learned through running every day.

• Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest.

• If I go for a time without seeing water, I feel like something’s slowly draining out of me.

• To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That’s my motto.

• (In any marathon) I didn’t walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked.

• Break one of my rules once, and I’m bound to break many more.

• Every time your feet hit the ground when you run, it’s a shock equivalent to three times your weight, and this repeats itself perhaps over ten thousand times a day.

• Reaching the finish line, never walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals.

• In most cases learning something essential in life requires physical pain.

• Some day, if I have a gravestone and I’m able to pick out what’s carved on it, I’d like it to say this: Haruki Murakami, 1949-20**, Writer (and Runner), At Least He Never Walked.