What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

that I had a lot of devoted readers, the one-in-ten repeaters, most of whom were young. They would wait patiently for my next bo ...

happening every day, which made me really happy. I felt like even though I was past thirty, there were still some possibilities ...

When I tell people I run every day, some are quite impressed. “You really must have a strong will,” they sometimes tell me. Of c ...

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 ca ...

Three SEPTEMBER 1, 2005 • KAUAI, HAWAII Athens in Midsummer — Running 26.2 Miles for the First Time Yesterday was the last day o ...

always loved taking naps. Anyway, I’m the type of person who, once he gets sleepy, can fall sound asleep anywhere. Definitely a ...

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 su ...

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 ...

sponsored this tour, which included the typical touristy visits to see ruins, a cruise on the Aegean Sea, etc., but once that wa ...

still dark, and reaching Marathon before the sun was high. The later it got, the hotter it would be. It was turning out to be ex ...

sidewalk disappears, replaced only by a white line painted along the road, marking off a narrow lane. Rush hour has begun, and t ...

have to write. Just focus on moving my feet forward, one after the other. That’s the only thing that matters. I pass twenty-two ...

The run from Athens to Marathon took me three hours and fifty-one minutes. Not exactly a great time, but at least I was able to ...

Four SEPTEMBER 19, 2005 • TOKYO Most of What I Know About Writing Fiction I Learned by Running Every Day On September 10 I bid f ...

course. But as long as you take your time and do it in stages, they won’t complain—aside from the occasional long face—and they’ ...

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 ...

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 k ...

focus to your entire body, and make sure it thoroughly assimilates the information necessary for you to write every single day a ...

Naturally there are people in the world (only a handful, for sure) blessed with enormous talent that, from beginning to end, doe ...

If I continue to overwork my muscles, she warns, sooner or later something’s going to give. She might be right. But I also have ...