Free What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami

automatically assume they don’t have to work that hard anymore, and they lower their limits. Muscles really are like animals, and they want to take it as easy as possible; if pressure isn’t applied to them, they relax and cancel out the memory of all that work. Input this canceled memory once again, and you have to repeat the whole journey from the very beginning. Naturally it’s important to take a break sometimes, but in a critical time like this, when I’m training for a race, I have to show my muscles who’s boss. I have to make it clear to them what’s expected. I have to maintain a certain tension by being unsparing, but not to the point where I burn out. These are tactics that all experienced runners learn over time.
     
    While I’ve been in Japan a new short-story collection of mine,
Strange Tales from Tokyo,
has come out, and I have to do several interviews about the book. I also have to check the galleys for a book of music criticism that’s coming out in November and meet with people to discuss the cover. Then I have to go over my old translations of Raymond Carver’s complete works. With new paperback editions of these coming out, I want to revise all the translations, which is time consuming. On top of this, I have to write a long introduction to the short-story collection
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman,
which will be published next year in the U.S. Plus I’m steadily working on these essays on running, though nobody in particular has asked me to. Just like a silent village blacksmith, tinkering away.
    There are also a few business details I have to take care of. While we were living in the States, the woman who works in our Tokyo office as our assistant all of a sudden announced that she’s getting married at the beginning of next year and wants to quit, so we have to look for a replacement. Can’t have the office shut down over the summer. And soon after I return to Cambridge I have to give a few lectures at the university, so I’ve got to prepare for them as well.
    So I try, in the short amount of time I have, to take care of all these things as best I can. And I have to keep up my running to prepare for the NYC Marathon. Even if there were two of me, I still couldn’t do all that has to be done. No matter what, though, I keep up my running. Running every day is a kind of lifeline for me, so I’m not going to lay off or quit just because I’m busy. If I used being busy as an excuse not to run, I’d never run again. I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those
few reasons
nicely polished.
    Usually when I’m in Tokyo I run around the Jingu Gaien, the outer gardens of the Meiji Shrine, a course that passes Jingu Stadium. It doesn’t compare with Central Park in New York City, but it’s one of the few places in Tokyo with any greenery. I’ve run this course for years and have a clear sense of the distance. I’ve memorized all the holes and bumps along the way, so it’s the perfect place to practice and get a sense of how fast I’m going. Unfortunately there’s a lot of traffic in the area, not to mention pedestrians, and depending on the time of day the air isn’t so clean—but it’s in the middle of Tokyo, so that’s to be expected. It’s the best I can ask for. I consider myself fortunate to have a place to run so close to my apartment.
    One lap around Jingu Gaien is a little more than three-quarters of a mile, and I like the fact that they have distance markers in the ground. Whenever I want to run a set speed—a nine-minute-mile pace, or eight-minute, or seven-and-a-half—I run this course. When I first started to run the Jingu Gaien course, Toshihiko Seko was still an active runner and he used this course too. He was training hard in preparation for the Los Angeles Olympics. A shiny gold medal was the only thing on his mind. He’d lost the chance to go to the Moscow Olympics because of the boycott, so Los Angeles was