What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (8 page)

To deal with something unhealthy, a person needs to be as healthy as possible. That’s my motto. In other words, an unhealthy soul requires a healthy body. This might sound paradoxical, but it’s something I’ve felt very keenly ever since I became a professional writer. The healthy and the unhealthy are not necessarily at opposite ends of the spectrum. They don’t stand in opposition to each other, but rather complement each other, and in some cases even band together. Sure, many people who are on a healthy track in life think only of good health, while those who are getting unhealthy think only of that. But if you follow this sort of one-sided view, your life won’t be fruitful.

Some writers who in their youth wrote wonderful, beautiful, powerful works find that when they reach a certain age exhaustion suddenly takes over. The term
literary burnout
is quite apt here. Their later works may still be beautiful, and their exhaustion might impart its own special meaning, but it’s obvious these writers’ creative energy is in decline. This results, I believe, from their physical energy not being able to overcome the toxin they’re dealing with. The physical vitality that up till now was naturally able to overcome the toxin has passed its peak, and its effectiveness in their immune systems is gradually wearing off. When this happens it’s difficult for a writer to remain intuitively creative. The balance between imaginative power and the physical abilities that sustain it has crumbled. The writer is left employing the techniques and methods he has cultivated, using a kind of residual heat to mold something into what looks like a literary work—a restrained method that can’t be a very pleasant journey. Some writers take their own lives at this point, while others just give up writing and choose another path.

If possible, I’d like to avoid that kind of literary burnout. My idea of literature is something more spontaneous, more cohesive, something with a kind of natural, positive vitality. For me, writing a novel is like climbing a steep mountain, struggling up the face of the cliff, reaching the summit after a long and arduous ordeal. You overcome your limitations, or you don’t, one or the other. I always keep that inner image with me as I write.

Needless to say, someday you’re going to lose. Over time the body inevitably deteriorates. Sooner or later, it’s defeated and disappears. When the body disintegrates, the spirit also (most likely) is gone too. I’m well aware of that. However, I’d like to postpone, for as long as I possibly can, the point where my vitality is defeated and surpassed by the toxin. That’s my aim as a novelist. And besides, at this point I don’t have the leisure to be burned out. Which is exactly why even though people say, “He’s no artist,” I keep on running.

On October 6 I’m giving a reading at MIT, and since I’ll have to speak in front of people, today as I ran I practiced the speech (not out loud, of course). When I do this, I don’t listen to music. I just whisper the English in my head.

When I’m in Japan I rarely have to speak in front of people. I don’t give any talks. In English, though, I’ve given a number of talks, and I expect that, if the opportunity arises, I’ll give more in the future. It’s strange, but when I have to speak in front of an audience, I find it more comfortable to use my far-from-perfect English than Japanese. I think this is because when I have to speak seriously about something in Japanese I’m overcome with the feeling of being swallowed up in a sea of words. There’s an infinite number of choices for me, infinite possibilities. As a writer, Japanese and I have a tight relationship. So if I’m going to speak in front of an undefined large group of people, I grow confused and frustrated when faced by that teeming ocean of words.

With Japanese, I want to cling, as much as I can, to the act of sitting alone at my desk and writing. On this home ground of writing I can catch hold of words and context effectively, just the way I want to, and turn them into something concrete. That’s my job, after all. But once I try to actually speak about things I was sure I’d pinned down, I feel very keenly that something—something very important—has spilled out and escaped. And I just can’t accept that sort of disorienting estrangement.

Once I try to put together a talk in a foreign language, though, inevitably my linguistic choices and possibilities are limited: much as I love reading books in English, speaking in English is definitely not my forte. But that makes me feel all the more comfortable giving a speech. I just think,
It’s a foreign language, so what’re you going to do?
This was a fascinating discovery for me. Naturally it takes a lot of time to prepare. Before I get up on stage I have to memorize a thirty- or forty-minute talk in English. If you just read a written speech as is, the whole thing will feel lifeless to the audience. I have to choose words that are easy to pronounce so people can understand me, and remember to get the audience to laugh to put them at ease. I have to convey to those listening a sense of who I am. Even if it’s just for a short time, I have to get the audience on my side if I want them to listen to me. And in order to do that, I have to practice the speech over and over, which takes a lot of effort. But there’s also the payoff that comes with a new challenge.

Running is a great activity to do while memorizing a speech. As, almost unconsciously, I move my legs, I line the words up in order in my mind. I measure the rhythm of the sentences, the way they’ll sound. With my mind elsewhere I’m able to run for a long while, keeping up a natural speed that doesn’t tire me out. Sometimes when I’m practicing a speech in my head, I catch myself making all kinds of gestures and facial expressions, and the people passing me from the opposite direction give me a weird look.

Today as I was running I saw a plump Canada goose lying dead by the shore of the Charles. A dead squirrel, too, lying next to a tree. They both looked like they were fast asleep, but they were dead. Their expressions were calm, as if they’d accepted the end of life, as if they were finally liberated. Next to the boathouse by the river was a homeless man wearing layers of filthy clothes. He was pushing a shopping cart and belting out “America the Beautiful.” Whether he really meant it or was being deeply ironic, I couldn’t tell.

At any rate, the calendar has changed to October. Before I know it another month will be over. And a very harsh season is just around the corner.

Six

JUNE
23, 1996
•
LAKE SAROMA, HOKKAIDO

Nobody Pounded the Table Anymore, Nobody Threw Their Cups

H
ave you ever run
sixty-two miles in a single day? The vast majority of people in the world (those who are sane, I should say) have never had that experience. No normal person would ever do something so foolhardy. But I did, once. I completed a race that went from morning till evening, and covered sixty-two miles. It was draining physically, as you can imagine, and for a while afterward I swore I’d never run again. I doubt I’ll try it again, but who knows what the future may hold. Maybe someday, having forgotten my lesson, I’ll take up the challenge of an ultramarathon again. You have to wait until tomorrow to find out what tomorrow will bring.

Either way, when I look back on that race now I can see that it had a lot of meaning for me as a runner. I don’t know what sort of general significance running sixty-two miles by yourself has, but as an action that deviates from the ordinary yet doesn’t violate basic values, you’d expect it to afford you a special sort of self-awareness. It should add a few new elements to your inventory in understanding who you are. And as a result, your view of your life, its colors and shape, should be transformed. More or less, for better or for worse, this happened to me, and I was transformed.

What follows is based on a sketch I wrote a few days after the race, before I forgot the details. As I read these notes ten years later, all the thoughts and feelings I had that day come back in quite sharp focus. I think when you read this you’ll get a general idea of what this harsh race left me with, both the happy and not-so-happy things. But maybe you’ll tell me you just don’t get it.

This sixty-two-mile ultramarathon takes place every year at Lake Saroma, in June, in Hokkaido. The rest of Japan is in the rainy season then, but Hokkaido is too far north. Early summer in Hokkaido is a very pleasant time of year, though in its northernmost part, where Lake Saroma is, summer warmth is still a ways off. In the early morning, when the race starts, it’s still freezing, and you have to wear heavy clothes. As the sun gets higher in the sky, you gradually warm up, and the runners, like bugs going through metamorphosis, shed one layer of clothes after another. By the end of the race, though I kept my gloves on, I’d stripped down to a tank top, which left me feeling chilly. If it rained, I’d really have frozen, but fortunately, despite the lingering cloud cover, we didn’t get a drop of rain.

The runners run around the shores of Lake Saroma, which faces the Sea of Okhotsk. Only once you actually run the course do you realize how ridiculously huge Lake Saroma is. Yuubetsu, a town on the west side of the lake, is the starting point, and the finish line is at Tokoro-cho (now renamed Kitami City), on the east side. The last part of the race winds through Wakka Natural Flower Garden, an extensive, long, and narrow natural arboretum that faces the sea. As courses go—assuming you can afford to take in the view—it’s gorgeous. They don’t control the traffic along the course, but since there aren’t many cars and people to begin with, there really isn’t a need to. Beside the road cows are lazily chewing grass. They show zero interest in the runners. They’re too busy eating grass to care about all these whimsical people and their nonsensical activities. And for their part, the runners don’t have the leisure to pay attention to what the cows are up to, either. After twenty-six miles there’s a checkpoint about every six miles, and if you exceed the time limit when you pass, you’re automatically disqualified. They’re very strict about it, and every year a lot of runners are disqualified. After traveling all the way to the northernmost reaches of Japan to run here, I certainly don’t want to get disqualified halfway through. No matter what, I’m determined to beat the posted maximum times.

This race is one of the pioneering ultramarathons in Japan, and the whole event is smoothly and efficiently run by people who live in the area. It’s a pleasant event to be in.

I don’t have much to say about the first part of the race, to the rest station at the thirty-fourth mile. I just ran on and on, silently. It didn’t feel much different from a long Sunday-morning run. I calculated that if I could keep up a jogging pace of nine and a half minutes per mile, I’d be able to finish in ten hours. Adding in time to rest and eat, I expected to finish in under eleven hours. (Later I found out how overly optimistic I was.)

At 26.2 miles there’s a sign that says, “This is the distance of a marathon.” There’s a white line painted on the concrete indicating the exact spot. I exaggerate only a bit when I say that the moment I straddled that line a slight shiver went through me, for this was the first time I’d ever run more than a marathon. For me this was the Strait of Gibraltar, beyond which lay an unknown sea. What lay in wait beyond this, what unknown creatures were living there, I didn’t have a clue. In my own small way I felt the same fear that sailors of old must have felt.

After I passed that point, and as I was coming up on thirty-one miles, I felt a slight change physically, as if the muscles of my legs were starting to tighten up. I was hungry and thirsty, too. I’d made a mental note to remember to drink some water at every station, whether or not I felt thirsty, but even so, like an unfortunate destiny, like the dark-hearted queen of the night, thirst kept pursuing me. I felt slightly uneasy. I’d only finished half the race, and if I felt like this now, would I really be able to complete sixty-two miles?

At the rest stop at thirty-four miles I changed into fresh clothes and ate the snack my wife had prepared. Now that the sun was getting higher the temperature had risen, so I took off my half tights and changed into a clean shirt and shorts. I changed my New Balance ultramarathon shoes (there really are such things in the world) from a size eight to an eight and a half. My feet had started to swell up, so I needed to wear shoes a half size larger. It was cloudy the whole time, with no sun getting through, so I decided to take off my hat, which I had on to keep the sun off me. I’d worn the hat to keep my head warm, too, in case it rained, but at this point it didn’t look like it was going to. It was neither too hot nor too cold, ideal conditions for long-distance running. I washed down two nutrition-gel packs, took in some water, and ate some bread and butter and a cookie. I carefully did some stretching on the grass and sprayed my calves with an anti-inflammatory. I washed my face, got rid of the sweat and dirt, and used the restroom.

I must have rested about ten minutes or so, but never sat down once. If I sat down, I felt, I’d never be able to get up and start running again.

“Are you okay?” I was asked.

“I’m okay,” I answered simply. That’s all I could say.

After drinking water and stretching, I set out on the road again. Now it was just run and run until the finish line. As soon as I set off again, though, I realized something was wrong. My leg muscles had tightened up like a piece of old, hard rubber. I still had lots of stamina, and my breathing was regular, but my legs had a mind of their own. I had plenty of desire to run, but my legs had their own opinion about this.

I gave up on my disobedient legs and started focusing on my upper body. I swung my arms wide as I ran, making my upper body swing, transmitting the momentum to my lower body. Using that momentum, I was able to push my legs forward (after the race, though, my wrists were swollen). Naturally, you can only go at a snail’s pace running like this, in a form not much different from a fast walk. But ever so slowly, as if it dawned on them again what their job was, or perhaps as if they’d resigned themselves to fate, my leg muscles began to perform normally and I was able to run pretty much the way I usually run. Thankfully.

Even though my legs were working now, the thirteen miles from the thirty-four-mile rest stop to the forty-seventh mile were excruciating. I felt like a piece of beef being run, slowly, through a meat grinder. I had the will to go ahead, but now my whole body was rebelling. It felt like a car trying to go up a slope with the parking brake on. My body felt like it was falling apart and would soon come completely undone. Out of oil, the bolts coming loose, the wrong cogs in gear, I was rapidly slowing down as one runner after another passed me. A tiny old lady around seventy or so passed me and shouted out, “Hang in there!” Man alive. What was going to happen the rest of the way? There were still twenty-five miles to go.

As I ran, different parts of my body, one after another, began to hurt. First my right thigh hurt like crazy, then that pain migrated over to my right knee, then to my left thigh, and on and on. All the parts of my body had their chance to take center stage and scream out their complaints. They screamed, complained, yelled in distress, and warned me that they weren’t going to take it anymore. For them, running sixty miles was an unknown experience, and each body part had its own excuse. I understood completely, but all I wanted them to do was be quiet and keep on running. Like Danton or Robespierre eloquently attempting to persuade the dissatisfied and rebellious Revolutionary Tribunal, I tried to talk each body part into showing a little cooperation. Encouraged them, clung to them, flattered them, scolded them, tried to buck them up.
It’s just a little farther, guys. You can’t give up on me now.
But if you think about it—and I did think about it—Danton and Robespierre wound up with their heads cut off.

Ultimately, using every trick in the book, I managed to grit my teeth and make it through thirteen miles of sheer torment.

I’m not a human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.

That’s what I told myself. That’s about all I thought about, and that’s what got me through. If I were a living person of blood and flesh I would have collapsed from the pain. There definitely was a being called
me
right there. And accompanying that is a consciousness that is the self. But at that point, I had to force myself to think that those were convenient forms and nothing more. It’s a strange way of thinking and definitely a very strange feeling—consciousness trying to deny consciousness. You have to force yourself into an inorganic place. Instinctively I realized that this was the only way to survive.

I’m not a human. I’m a piece of machinery. I don’t need to feel a thing. Just forge on ahead.

I repeat this like a mantra. A literal, mechanical repetition. And I try hard to reduce the perceptible world to the narrowest parameters. All I can see is the ground three yards ahead, nothing beyond. My whole world consists of the ground three yards ahead. No need to think beyond that. The sky and wind, the grass, the cows munching the grass, the spectators, cheers, lake, novels, reality, the past, memory—these mean nothing to me. Just getting me past the next three yards—
this
was my tiny reason for living as a human. No, I’m sorry—as a
machine.

Every three miles I stop and drink water at a water station. Every time I stop I briskly do some stretching. My muscles are as hard as week-old cafeteria bread. I can’t believe these are really my muscles. At one rest stop they have pickled plums, and I eat one. I never knew a pickled plum could taste so good. The salt and sour taste spreads through my mouth and steadily permeates my entire body.

Instead of forcing myself to run, perhaps it would have been smarter if I’d walked. A lot of other runners were doing just that. Giving their legs a rest as they walked. But I didn’t walk a single step. I stopped a lot to stretch, but I never walked. I didn’t come here to walk. I came to run. That’s the reason—the only reason—I flew all the way to the northern tip of Japan. No matter how slow I might run, I wasn’t about to walk. That was the rule. Break one of my rules once, and I’m bound to break many more. And if I’d done that, it would have been next to impossible to finish this race.

While I was enduring all this, around the forty-seventh mile I felt like I’d passed through something. That’s what it felt like.
Passed through
is the only way I can express it. Like my body had passed clean through a stone wall. At what exact point I felt like I’d made it through, I can’t recall, but suddenly I noticed I was already on the other side. I was convinced I’d made it through. I don’t know about the logic or the process or the method involved—I was simply convinced of the reality that I’d
passed through.

After that, I didn’t have to think anymore. Or, more precisely, there wasn’t the need to try to consciously think about not thinking. All I had to do was go with the flow and I’d get there automatically. If I gave myself up to it, some sort of power would naturally push me forward.

Run this long, and of course it’s going to be exhausting. But at this point being tired wasn’t a big issue. By this time exhaustion was the status quo. My muscles were no longer a seething Revolutionary Tribunal and seemed to have given up on complaining. Nobody pounded the table anymore, nobody threw their cups. My muscles silently accepted this exhaustion now as a historical inevitability, an ineluctable outcome of the revolution. I had been transformed into a being on autopilot, whose sole purpose was to rhythmically swing his arms back and forth, move his legs forward one step at a time. I didn’t think about anything. I didn’t feel anything. I realized all of a sudden that even physical pain had all but vanished. Or maybe it was shoved into some unseen corner, like some ugly furniture you can’t get rid of.

In this state, after I’d
passed through
this unseen barrier, I started passing a lot of other runners. Just after I crossed the checkpoint near forty-seven miles, which you had to reach in under eight hours and forty-five minutes or be disqualified, many other runners, unlike me, began to slow down, some even giving up running and starting to walk. From that point to the finish line I must have passed about two hundred. At least I counted up to two hundred. Only once or twice did somebody else pass me from behind. I could count the number of runners I’d passed, because I didn’t have anything else to do. I was in the midst of deep exhaustion that I’d totally accepted, and the reality was that I was still able to continue running, and for me there was nothing more I could ask of the world.