What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A MemoirFrom the best-selling author of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and After Dark, a rich and revelatory memoir about writing and running, and the integral impact both have made on his life. In 1982, having sold his jazz bar to devote himself to writing, Haruki Murakami began running to keep fit. A year later, he’d completed a solo course from Athens to Marathon, and now, after dozens of such races, not to mention triathlons and a slew of critically acclaimed books, he reflects upon the influence the sport has had on his life and—even more important—on his writing. Equal parts training log, travelogue, and reminiscence, this revealing memoir covers his four-month preparation for the 2005 New York City Marathon and includes settings ranging from Tokyo’s Jingu Gaien gardens, where he once shared the course with an Olympian, to the Charles River in Boston among young women who outpace him. Through this marvellous lens of sport emerges a cornucopia of memories and insights: the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer, his greatest triumphs and disappointments, his passion for vintage LPs and the experience, after the age of fifty, of seeing his race times improve and then fall back. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is both for fans of this masterful yet guardedly private writer and for the exploding population of athletes who find similar satisfaction in distance running. |
Contents
Section 1 | 3 |
Section 2 | 24 |
Section 3 | 48 |
Section 4 | 69 |
Section 5 | 88 |
Section 6 | 103 |
Section 7 | 123 |
Section 8 | 136 |
Section 9 | 152 |
Section 10 | 175 |
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Common terms and phrases
able to run anymore asked Athens bicycling bike Blind Willow body Boston Boston Marathon breathing Central Park Charles River clouds cold course crawl decent distance enjoy exhausted feel felt finally finish line focus full marathon getting goggles going gradually half marathon happy hard Haruki Murakami Hokkaido Japan Jingu jogging Kauai keep on running kind knee legs live long-distance running look matter Mick Jagger mind minutes morning Murakami City muscles natural never Niigata Prefecture ning novelist once pace pain passed person physical pretty problem race rain river road runners running every day shoes slopes someone sometimes sort started summer sure swimming talent Talk there's thing thought Tokyo Toshihiko Seko triathlon ultramarathon waiting walk what's Wild Sheep Chase wind writing novels York City Marathon young