I usually never write reviews about a particular thing but I thought this book requires one. Following high praise, I recently read “What I talk about when I talk about running” by Haruki Murakami. There are other well-known works by this author but I picked up this book without any second thought because of my experience being an (amateur) runner these past couple of years. I started running regularly during the pandemic and it is mainly a getaway for me when I am frustrated or anxious about something and feel this unstoppable need to get out there and … run. This impulse sometimes arrives at a time of bad weather (when it is windy or raining) and usually my urge for running trumps everything. I am not talking about short runs or races (although I do go out for short runs, when time is of the essence), but I am more interested in the aspect of endurance in long distance running, mainly for the reason that after a certain moment, like a flip of a switch, it suddenly transforms into something deeper, more contemplative, rather than physical exertion. Murakami puts it in a much better way and I quote, “No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act” (this sentence alone made me consume the book much faster than my regular pace). People who do run long distances might agree that this does not happen in every run, you sometimes get into that state and sometimes it’s just pure exertion and you want to get back home, or, not run, as soon as possible.

Given this background about my running, I was curious what someone has got to say about running in the first place as, I imagine it’s mostly different reasons for different people, some want to get in a better shape, some simply train for a race, and some (like myself) simply run as it frees them. I am glad that I picked this book as it turns out that Murakami has similar reasons for running (rather, I have similar reasons as Murakami’s). He talks about his experiences during his runs, how he started running (in his thirties), the training regime he follows before marathons (which he participated in at least once every year), how he made it through an ultra-marathon (62 miles/100 kms) in Japan, and how running has made him a better novelist that he is today. What I like most in his writing is his clever use of analogies that drive the exact feeling home. To give you one example, he writes, “on the highway of life you can’t always be on the fast lane”, written in the context of completing a race and competing against others. There are several others peppered throughout the book in various contexts that makes it a fun read.

A question that seems like it should have a simple answer is “What do you think when you are running?”. However, in the author’s experience (and somewhat mine in a relatively smaller scale), this is not an easy question as there is no one specific thing that is thought about. Depending on how pleasant or unpleasant the weather, some thoughts go towards thinking about the weather, depending on how long you have been running, there’s a lingering thought on where’s the finish line. Ultimately, there is a whirlwind of thoughts, and none of them are anything worth mentioning. Again, Murakami puts it, “the thoughts that occur to me while I’m running are like the clouds in the sky. Clouds of different sizes. They come and they go, while the sky remains the same sky as always.”. I cannot overstate how many times I have witnessed exactly this while running. No matter how many times you look up, you’ll notice that the clouds are always taciturn.

Another interesting element of this book lies in how he draws parallels between running and writing, and shares his thoughts on how he became a running novelist. For someone like me, aspiring to be a good writer, there are some great pieces of wisdom in this book. As described, the three qualities a novelist (or, more generally, a writer) should have are talent, focus and endurance. While talent is something that one is born with, focus and endurance are the ones that can be sharpened with training. One way to train both of them at the same time, is to sit at your desk everyday for an hour and focus on doing one thing. This has to be repeated everyday and even if you are not doing anything, just the act of sitting at your desk and concentrating will improve focus and gradually expand your limits. Much like long-distance running, writing also requires endurance (albeit, of a different form) because the process of focusing your mind, silencing away the distractions, creating something out of a blank page and choosing the right words is mentally taxing. Hence, just as we train our bodies for enduring long stretches of running, training our minds for enduring long bouts of writing is just as essential. Another great analogy - “I haven’t spotted any springs nearby. I have to pound the rock with a chisel and dig out a deep hole before I can locate the source of creativity.” - where, spotting springs refers to the abilities of people with inborn talent for writing, and the rest refers to his process of enduring in order to write novels.

The real reason why I was curious to read this book is because I recently ran my first half-marathon and experienced some unusual/out-of-ordinary feelings towards the end of the race and I wondered if I could find something similar in a memoir about a person’s running experiences. Surely enough, I did find them. My finish time is not worth mentioning here (I tweeted about it if you’re curious :)), but, the process of training for a half-marathon, setting up weekly distance targets, your legs feeling sore all the time, dealing with all kinds of pain that were conveniently hiding until you started pushing more and coming up with remedies that will hopefully make the pain go away, are all part of the process as Murakami also recollects. Understandably, all of this, that is, the process of improving or perfecting each aspect of your running in the anticipation that it will be a smooth-sailing on D-Day (spoiler alert! it usually isn’t), takes a lot of time. However, a clever spin on this, as written in the book, is to think of it as a shortcut. Or, in his words, “sometimes taking the time is actually a shortcut.”.

One thing that anyone running long-distances or training for a half/full marathon has to come to terms with is that there is a lot of pain involved. The sooner you internalize this the better because once you know that there will be pain, there will not be any lingering second thoughts on the choice of running long distances in the first place. The challenge, then, lies in how you manage to overcome that pain. As Murakami says, “If pain weren’t involved who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in a marathon or a triathlon. It is precisely because of the pain, because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling of really being alive - or at least a partial sense of it.”.

People might think, “What is the point of all this running?” because, from an outsider’s perspective, the pain and the stress that you’re putting your body through, is futile (another related question - “Doesn’t it get boring after a while?”). From my experience, every time I went on a longer run, I have learned something about myself and the limits of my body. There’s some despair as to why your body is not performing as you expect it to, but, at the same time, there’s some hope that you might just be able to work on those limitations and be ready for the race. I would like to end with a quote from the book (again), which is, “To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts”.

Thinking about my PhD, sometimes I wonder whether I chose long-distance running or long-distance running chose me as I can definitely draw some parallels between the kind of endeavors required for doing good in both of them. A topic for another time, perhaps. Anyways, without digressing further, this book is a must-read for all the readers out there sharing similar thoughts and experiences about and during running. I assure you, you will not regret reading it. On the contrary, you’d ask, why is this memoir so short?