What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (4 page)

In other words, let’s face it: Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness. Of course, that might take time and effort. And maybe it won’t seem to be worth all that. It’s up to each individual to decide whether or not it is.

When I tell people I run every day, some are quite impressed. “You really must have a strong will,” they sometimes tell me. Of course, it’s nice to be praised like this. A lot better than being disparaged, that’s for sure. But I don’t think it’s merely willpower that makes you able to do something. The world isn’t that simple. To tell the truth, I don’t even think there’s that much correlation between my running every day and whether or not I have a strong will. I think I’ve been able to run for more than twenty years for a simple reason: It suits me. Or at least because I don’t find it all that painful. Human beings naturally continue doing things they like, and they don’t continue what they don’t like. Admittedly, something close to will does play a small part in that. But no matter how strong a will a person has, no matter how much he may hate to lose, if it’s an activity he doesn’t really care for, he won’t keep it up for long. Even if he did, it wouldn’t be good for him.

That’s why I’ve never recommended running to others. I’ve tried my best never to say something like,
Running is great. Everybody should try it.
If some people have an interest in long-distance running, just leave them be, and they’ll start running on their own. If they’re not interested in it, no amount of persuasion will make any difference. Marathon running is not a sport for everyone, just as being a novelist isn’t a job for everyone. Nobody ever recommended or even desired that I be a novelist—in fact, some tried to stop me. I had the idea to be one, and that’s what I did. Likewise, a person doesn’t become a runner because someone recommends it. People basically become runners because they’re meant to.

Still, some might read this book and say, “Hey, I’m going to give running a try,” and then discover they enjoy it. And of course that would be a beautiful thing. As the author of this book I’d be very pleased if that happened. But people have their own individual likes and dislikes. Some people are suited more for marathon running, some for golf, others for gambling. Whenever I see students in gym class all made to run a long distance, I feel sorry for them. Forcing people who have no desire to run, or who aren’t physically fit enough, is a kind of pointless torture. I always want to advise teachers not to force all junior and senior high school students to run the same course, but I doubt anybody’s going to listen to me. That’s what schools are like. The most important thing we ever learn at school is the fact that the most important things can’t be learned at school.

No matter how much long-distance running might suit me, of course there are days when I feel kind of lethargic and don’t want to run. Actually, it happens a lot. On days like that, I try to think of all kinds of plausible excuses to slough it off. Once, I interviewed the Olympic runner Toshihiko Seko, just after he retired from running and became manager of the S&B company team. I asked him, “Does a runner at your level ever feel like you’d rather not run today, like you don’t want to run and would rather just sleep in?” He stared at me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, “Of course. All the time!”

Now that I look back on it I can see what a dumb question that was. I guess even back then I knew how dumb it was, but I suppose I wanted to hear the answer directly from someone of Seko’s caliber. I wanted to know whether, despite being worlds apart in terms of strength, the amount we can exercise, and motivation, when we lace up our running shoes early in the morning we feel exactly the same way. Seko’s reply at the time came as a great relief.
In the final analysis we’re all the same
, I thought.

Whenever I feel like I don’t want to run, I always ask myself the same thing:
You’re able to make a living as a novelist, working at home, setting your own hours, so you don’t have to commute on a packed train or sit through boring meetings. Don’t you realize how fortunate you are?
(Believe me, I do.)
Compared to that, running an hour around the neighborhood is nothing, right?
Whenever I picture packed trains and endless meetings, this gets me motivated all over again and I lace up my running shoes and set off without any qualms.
If I can’t manage this much,
I think,
it’ll serve me right.
I say this knowing full well that there are lots of people who’d pick riding a crowded train and attending meetings any day over running every day for an hour.

At any rate, that’s how I started running. Thirty-three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a
young man.
The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. That age may be a kind of crossroads in life. That was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.

Three

SEPTEMBER
1, 2005
•
KAUAI, HAWAII

Athens in Midsummer—Running 26.2 Miles for the First Time

Y
esterday was the last day
of August. During this month (thirty-one days), I ran a total of 217 miles.

My goal is the New York City Marathon on November 6. I’ve had to make some adjustments to prepare for it; so far, so good. I started a set running schedule five months ahead of time, increasing, in stages, the distance I run.

The weather in Kauai in August is wonderful, and I wasn’t rained out even once. When it did rain, it was a pleasant shower that cooled down my overheated body. Weather on the north shore of Kauai is generally good in the summer, but it’s rare to have such nice weather continue for so long. Thanks to this, I was able to run as much as I wanted. I feel in good shape, so even though I’m gradually increasing the distance I run, my body hasn’t complained. These three months I’ve been able to run pain-free, with no injuries, and without feeling overly tired.

The summer heat didn’t wear me down, either. I don’t do anything in particular to keep my energy level up during the summer. I guess the only thing I do specifically is try not to drink so many cold drinks. And eat more fruits and vegetables. When it comes to food, Hawaii is the ideal place for me to live in the summer because I can easily get lots of fresh fruits—mangoes, papayas, avocados—literally right across the street. I’m not eating these, though, simply to stave off the summer blahs, but because my body just naturally craves them. Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.

One other way I keep healthy is by taking a nap. I really nap a lot. Usually I get sleepy right after lunch, plop down on the sofa, and doze off. Thirty minutes later I come wide awake. As soon as I wake up, my body isn’t sluggish and my mind is totally clear. This is what they call in southern Europe a siesta. I think I learned this custom when I lived in Italy, but maybe I’m misremembering, since I’ve always loved taking naps. Anyway, I’m the type of person who, once he gets sleepy, can fall sound asleep anywhere. Definitely a good talent to have if you want to stay healthy, but the problem is I sometimes fall fast asleep in situations where I shouldn’t.

I’ve shed a few pounds, too, and my face looks more toned. It’s a nice feeling to see your body going through these changes, though they certainly don’t happen as quickly as when I was young. Changes that used to take a month and a half now take three. The amount I can exercise is going downhill, as is the efficiency of the whole process, but what’re you going to do? I just have to accept it, and make do with what I can get. One of the realities of life. Plus, I don’t think we should judge the value of our lives by how efficient they are. The gym where I work out in Tokyo has a poster that says, “Muscles are hard to get and easy to lose. Fat is easy to get and hard to lose.” A painful reality, but a reality all the same.

In this way August waved good-bye (it really did seem like it waved), September rolled around, and my style of training has undergone another transformation. In the three months up till now I was basically trying to rack up the distance, not worrying about anything, but steadily increasing my pace and running as hard as I could. And this helped me build up my overall strength: I got more stamina, built up my muscles, spurred myself on both physically and mentally. The most important task here was to let my body know in no uncertain terms that running this hard is just par for the course. When I say
letting it know in no uncertain terms
I’m speaking figuratively, of course. No matter how much you might command your body to perform, don’t count on it to immediately obey. The body is an extremely practical system. You have to let it experience intermittent pain over time, and then the body will get the point. As a result, it will willingly accept (or maybe not) the increased amount of exercise it’s made to do. After this, you very gradually increase the upper limit of the amount of exercise you do. Doing it gradually is important so you don’t burn out.

Now that it’s September and the race is two months away, my training is entering a period of fine-tuning. Through modulated exercise—sometimes long, sometimes short, sometimes soft, sometimes hard—I’m transitioning from
quantity
of exercise to
quality.
The point is to reach the peak of exhaustion about a month before the race, so this is a critical period. In order to make any progress, I have to listen very carefully to feedback from my body.

In August I was able to settle down in one place, Kauai, and train, but in September I’ll be taking some long trips, back to Japan and then from Japan to Boston. In Japan I’ll be too busy to focus on running the way I have been. I should be able to make up for not running as much, though, by establishing a more efficient training program.

I’d really rather not talk about this—I’d much prefer to hide it away in the back of the closet—but the last time I ran a full marathon it was awful. I’ve run a lot of races, but never one that ended up so badly.

This race took place in Chiba Prefecture. Up to around the eighteenth mile I was going along at a good enough clip, and I was sure I’d run a decent time. I had plenty of stamina left, so I was positive I could finish the rest of the race with no problem. But just as I was thinking this, my legs suddenly stopped following orders. They began to cramp up, and it got so bad I couldn’t run anymore. I tried stretching, but the back of my thighs wouldn’t stop trembling, and finally cramped up into this weird knot. I couldn’t even stand up, and before I knew it I was squatting down beside the road. I’d had cramps in other races, but as long as I stretched for a while, about five minutes was all it took for my muscles to get back to normal and me to get back in the race. But now no matter how much time passed, the cramps wouldn’t go away. At one point I thought it’d gotten better and I began to run again, but sure enough the cramps returned. So the last three miles or so I had to walk. This was the first time I’d ever walked a marathon instead of running. Up till then I’d made it a point of pride that no matter how hard things might get, I never walked. A marathon is a running event, after all, not a walking event. But in that one race, even walking was a problem. The thought crossed my mind a few times that maybe I should give up and hitch a ride on one of the event shuttle buses.
My time was going to be awful anyway,
I thought,
so why not just throw in the towel?
But dropping out was the last thing I wanted to do. I might be reduced to crawling, but I was going to make it to the finish line on my own steam.

Other runners kept passing me, but I limped on, grimacing in pain. The numbers on my digital watch kept mercilessly ticking away. Wind blew in from the ocean, and the sweat on my shirt got cold and felt freezing. This was a winter race, after all. You’d better believe it’s cold hobbling down a road with the wind whipping by while you’re dressed only in a tank top and shorts. Your body warms up considerably as you run, and you don’t feel the cold; I was shocked by how cold it was once I stopped running. But what I felt much more than the cold was wounded pride, and how pitiful I looked tottering down a marathon course. About a mile from the finish line my cramps finally let up and I was able to run again. I slowly jogged for a while until I got back in form, then sped down the home stretch as hard as I could. My time, though, was indeed awful, as predicted.

There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training. That’s it in a word. Not enough overall exercise, plus not getting my weight down. Without knowing it, I’d developed a sort of arrogant attitude, convinced that just a fair-to-middling amount of training was enough for me to do a good job. It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride. When I was young, maybe just a fair-to-middling amount of training would have been enough for me to run a marathon. Without driving myself too hard in training, I could have banked on the strength I’d already built up to see me through and run a good time. Sadly, though, I’m no longer young. I’m getting to the age where you really do get only what you pay for.

As I ran this race I felt I never, ever wanted to go through that again. Freeze my butt off and feel miserable? I’ll pass. Right then and there I decided that before my next marathon I was going to go back to the basics, start from scratch, and do the very best I could. Train meticulously and rediscover what I was physically capable of. Tighten up all the loose screws, one by one. Do all that and see what happens. These were my thoughts as I dragged my cramped legs through the freezing wind, one runner after another passing me by.

As I’ve said, I’m not a very competitive type of person. To a certain extent, I figured, it’s sometimes hard to avoid losing. Nobody’s going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can’t always be in the fast lane. Still, I certainly don’t want to keep making the same mistakes over and over. Best to learn from my mistakes and put that lesson into practice the next time around. While I still have the ability to do that.

This may be the reason why, while I’m training for my next marathon—the New York City Marathon—I’m also writing this. Bit by bit I’m remembering things that took place when I was a beginning runner more than twenty years ago. Retracing my memories, rereading the simple journal I kept (I’m never able to keep a regular diary for very long, but I’ve faithfully kept up my runner’s journal) and reworking them into essay form, helps me consider the path I’ve taken and rediscover the feelings I had back then. I do this to both admonish and encourage myself. It’s also intended as a wake-up call for the motivation that, somewhere along the line, went dormant. I’m writing, in other words, to put my thoughts in some kind of order. And in hindsight—in the final analysis it’s always in hindsight—this may very well end up a kind of memoir that centers on the act of running.

This doesn’t mean that what’s occupying me at this moment is writing a personal history. I’m much more concerned with the practical question of how I can finish the New York City Marathon two months from now, with a halfway-decent time. The main task before me right now is how I can train in order to accomplish that.

On August 25 the U.S. magazine
Runner’s World
came to do a photo shoot on me. A young cameraman named Greg flew in from California and spent the day photographing me. An enthusiastic guy, he’d brought a truckload of equipment by plane all the way to Kauai. The magazine had interviewed me earlier, and the photos were to accompany the interview. There apparently aren’t too many novelists who run marathons (there are some, of course, but not many), and the magazine was interested in my life as a “Running Novelist.”
Runner’s World
is a very popular magazine among American runners, so I imagine a lot of runners will say hi to me when I’m in New York. This made me even more tense, thinking how I’d better not do a lousy job in the marathon.

Let’s go back to 1983. A nostalgic era now, back when Duran Duran and Hall and Oates were cranking out the hits.

In July of that year I traveled to Greece and ran by myself from Athens to the town of Marathon. This was the opposite direction of the original battle messenger’s course, which started in Marathon and went to Athens. I decided to run it backward because I figured I could start early in the morning from Athens, before rush hour (and before the air grew too polluted), leave the city, and head straight for Marathon, which would help me avoid traffic. This wasn’t an official race and I was running all alone, so naturally I couldn’t count on anyone to reroute vehicles just for me.

Why did I go all the way to Greece and run twenty-six miles by myself? I’d been asked by a men’s magazine to travel to Greece and write a travelogue about the trip. This was an officially organized media tour, sponsored by the Greek government’s Board of Tourism. A lot of other magazines also sponsored this tour, which included the typical touristy visits to see ruins, a cruise on the Aegean Sea, etc., but once that was over I’d have an open ticket and could stay as long as I wanted and do as I pleased. This kind of package tour didn’t interest me, but I did like the idea of being on my own afterward. Greece is the home of the original marathon course, and I was dying to see it with my own eyes. I figured I should be able to run at least part of it myself. For a beginning runner like me, this would definitely be an exciting experience.

Wait a sec,
I thought.
Why just one part? Why not run the
entire
distance?

When I suggested this to the editors of the magazine, they liked the idea. So I ended up running my first full marathon (or something close to it) quietly, all by myself. No crowds, no tape at the finish line, no hearty cheers from people along the way. None of that. But that was okay, since this was the original marathon course. What more could I ask for?

Actually, if you run straight from Athens to Marathon, it’s not quite the length of an official marathon, which is set at 26.2 miles. It’s about a mile short. I found out about this years later when I ran in an official race that followed the original course, starting in Marathon and ending in Athens. As those who watched the TV broadcast of the marathon at the Athens Olympics are aware, after the runners leave Marathon, at one point they go off on a side road to the left, run past some less-than-distinguished ruins, and then return to the main road. That’s how they make up for the extra distance. At the time, though, I wasn’t aware of this, and was under the impression that running straight from Athens to Marathon would be the full 26.2 miles. Actually, it was only twenty-five. But within Athens itself I took a few detours, and since the odometer in the van that accompanied me showed it had driven twenty-six miles, I suppose I ran something pretty close to a full marathon. Not that it matters much at this late date.