On Running and Murakami

I’ve been a runner for more than ten years. I started running a few times a week during university because it’s a sport that fits me well. It only requires a good pair of running shoes, it’s not time-consuming, and it can be done everywhere and in any season.

I’ve always been a long distance runner, and most of my runs have been around an hour long. I always find it engaging to go for a long run, where I can distract my mind from the focus of the day. This frequently helps me find new ideas and inspiration, just like I did for this article.

Recently I’ve started running every day, but for a shorter amount of time. The physical benefits remain the same. Two things made me change my habit: first, research suggests that shorter daily run are more beneficial for the well-being, reduce the risk of injuries, and allow the body to adapt gradually. Second, it takes less time. In a busy life, taking 30 minutes a day for your body and mind is not much, while one hour can become more of a burden.

The second thing I mention when I talk about running, after describing what type of runner I am, is the type of shoes. I currently run with the Wave Rider 28, which I bought from the Mizuno store in Kyoto, Japan. I’ve tried other common brands, and while there are differences for the pros, for a casual runner like me they are negligible — and Mizuno are good shoes. I chose them because they are the shoes that the writer Haruki Murakami uses.

Haruki Murakami is the most famous Japanese author alive today. He has written multiple bestsellers that have been translated into more than 50 languages worldwide and have inspired several movies. Other than being a successful author, he’s a long distance marathon runner and wrote about his experience with running in a book called “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running”.

Before dedicating himself entirely to writing, Murakami ran a jazz cafe in Tokyo with his wife, where he spent his days preparing cocktails, selecting music to play, and reading books. While it might seem like an easy job, he was working for 12 hours every day while smoking almost 60 cigarettes due to stress. Then one day, while watching a local baseball match, he had the realisation that he wanted to write fiction. Against the advice of his close friends, he sold the cafe and moved to the countryside with his wife, where he could have the calm environment needed to focus. While dedicating himself to writing, thanks also to some positive feedback received for his early stories, he discovered that sitting at a table for long hours every day wasn’t good for his health. So at 33, he quit smoking and decided that he would go for a run every single morning before immersing himself in writing.

Since then, Murakami has never stopped running, participating in more than 30 marathons around the world, including ultramarathons and triathlons. In the book, he explains the entire process that transformed him from a complete beginner to a long endurance runner. His secret was running every single day, mentioning that consistency was the key to his success.

Murakami has run for most of his life and wrote novels professionally for a long time. In the book, he explains the loose correlation between the two: the fact that both are activities done in solitude and that both require, other than a bit of talent, constant training to be sustainable over a long period. Writing is not easy. It requires sitting at a table alone, immersed in a long and deep thinking flow into imagination and memory. It’s a task that requires concentration and can sometimes be so intense that it becomes exhausting.

The book mixes the two experiences that Murakami had, describing that what he learned is that the key ingredients to engage in these activities are focus, endurance, and the patience needed to persist while waiting for the results to come.

I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run-simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change. — Haruki Murakami

In the West, we tend to associate authors with a status, almost as if they are celebrities and rockstars. In recent decades, we saw the rise of literary artistic personas that romanticised drinking, taking drugs, and burning out young. Think Burroughs, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, Bret Easton Ellis, or David Foster Wallace. They all made these themes central to their productions.

Murakami is a different kind of writer. Instead of drinking, smoking, abusing substances, and promoting an unhealthy lifestyle, he followed a strict diet, did endurance training, and committed himself to a self-imposed discipline to seriously carry out his duties. He promoted a life dedicated to running and the craft of writing, honouring his commitments while constantly training his persistence and resilience. This choice resembles the life of ancient samurais, the Japanese warriors with a high moral code and self-control. If you’ve ever been interested in Japan, you will notice that the attitude that samurais had toward their duty still persists in today’s life of Japanese salarymen. The country is famously renowned for the perfection they put into their crafts and their dedication to work, which comes from the culture of imposing strict discipline on themselves in order to challenge their own limits.

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. — Haruki Murakami

There’s a quiet rebellion in choosing Murakami over Bukowski as a way of life. Our Western culture too often normalises burnout and, instead of condemning substance abuse, subtly encourages it. The power that comes from disciplining ourselves and restraining our desires in pursuit of a higher goal is what allows us to simply show up every day and do the work, whether that means running or writing. The point of these activities, in the end, is to prove to ourself that we are capable of enduring, and of moving forward, every single day.