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

perhaps his last chance to win a medal. There was a kind of heroic air about him, something you could see clearly in his eyes. Nakamura, the manager of the S&B team, was still alive and well back then, and the team had a string of top-notch runners and was at the height of its power. The S&B team used this course every day for training, and over time we naturally grew to know each other by sight. Once I even traveled to Okinawa to write an article on them while they were training there.
    Each of these runners would jog individually early in the morning before going to work, and then in the afternoon the team would work out together. Back then I used to jog there before seven a.m.—when the traffic wasn’t bad, there weren’t as many pedestrians, and the air was relatively clean—and the S&B team members and I would often pass each other and nod a greeting. On rainy days we’d exchange a smile, a guess-we’re-both-having-it-tough kind of smile. I remember two young runners in particular, Taniguchi and Kanei. They were both in their late twenties, both former members of the Waseda University track team, where they’d been standouts in the Hakone relay race. After Seko was named manager of the S&B team, they were expected to be the two young stars of the team. They were the caliber of runner expected to win medals at the Olympics someday, and hard training didn’t faze them. Sadly, though, they were killed in a car accident when the team was training together in Hokkaido in the summer. I’d seen with my own eyes the tough regimen they’d put themselves through, and it was a real shock when I heard the news of their deaths. It hurt me to hear this, and I felt it was a terrible waste.
    We’d hardly ever spoken, and I didn’t know them personally that well. I only learned after their deaths that they had both just gotten married. Still, as a fellow long-distance runner who’d encountered them day after day, I felt like we somehow understood each other. Even if the skill level varies, there are things that only runners understand and share. I truly believe that.
    Even now, when I run along Jingu Gaien or Asakasa Gosho, sometimes I remember these other runners. I’ll round a corner and feel like I should see them coming toward me, silently running, their breath white in the morning air. And I always think this: They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?
     
    Around my home in Kanagawa I can do a completely different type of training. As I mentioned before, near my house is a running course with lots of steep slopes. There’s also another course nearby that takes about three hours to complete—perfect for a long run. Most of it is a flat road that parallels a river and the sea, and there aren’t many cars and hardly any traffic lights to slow me up. The air is clean, too, unlike in Tokyo. It can get a little boring to run by yourself for three hours, but I listen to music, and since I know what I’m up against I can enjoy the run. The only problem is that it’s a course where you loop back halfway, so you can’t just quit in the middle if you get tired. I have to make it back on my own steam even if it means crawling. Overall, though, it’s a nice environment to train in.
     
    Back to novels for a moment.
    In every interview I’m asked what’s the most important quality a novelist has to have. It’s pretty obvious: talent. No matter how much enthusiasm and effort you put into writing, if you totally lack literary talent you can forget about being a novelist. This is more of a prerequisite than a necessary quality. If you don’t have any fuel, even the best car won’t run.
    The problem with talent, though, is that in most cases the person involved can’t control its amount or quality. You might find the amount isn’t enough and you want to increase it, or you might try to be frugal to make