Haruki Murakami: what he talks about when he talks about running

Rarely have I ever ventured into reading a book that wasn’t fiction — sometimes it’s easier to get lost in an imaginary world than reading about the reality we live in.

However, when my heart got broken a couple of weeks ago, I decided I was tired of reading about happy endings and that I needed something different, something that would take my mind off things. That was the day I bought my first Haruki Murakami’s book and fell in love with his writing.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is like nothing else I’ve ever read before. It is, essentially, his memoir of running and writing, how the two things can coexist and how they shaped him into the person he is today. But this book is so much more: it is enjoyable, peculiar and full of life lessons everyone should at least read about.

I never once planned of getting into running seriously, it has always been something I’ve done in my spare time instead of going to the gym. But reading about his struggles throughout the years, the pain of running multiple marathons, training every day in preparation of important races, has shown me a different side of the sport.

In only 180 pages, Murakami has managed to explain just how much running has shaped his life choices and him as a person. After selling his business to dedicate his life to writing, Murakami discovered a problem with his decision: the question of how to keep fit physically. “I tend to gain weight if I don’t do anything,” he writes in the book. “If I wanted to have a long life as a novelist, I needed to find a way to keep fit and maintain a healthy weight,” and that’s exactly what running did for him.

The book is an insight into his daily life: how and when he works. We read of his insecurities when it comes to running and writing, we learn when he wakes up and goes to bed, what shoes he likes when it comes to running. And these are exactly the sorts of things that make this book so accessible for everyone: runners and non-runners like me.

“It’s been some ten years since I first had the idea of a book about running,” explains Murakami. “At a certain point, though, I decided that I should just write honestly about what I think and feel about running.”

And so, the struggles begin: from running the New York Marathon to travelling all the way to Greece to run a solo course from Athens to Marathon, to his 62-mile run in Japan. He recounts the brutal “wall” that hits runners just miles before the end of the marathon — well described in his first insane run in Greece.

There is no off-season in Murakami’s life: from one race to another, running for a quarter of a century has brought him to discover his own personal standard, meeting new people that have encouraged and helped him. But perhaps, the most important thing, that most of what he now knows about writing he has learned through running every day.

Book available from Amazon for £5.84