What I Talk About When I Talk About Haruki Murakami

I’d like to start by saying that Haruki Murakami—- titan of modern literature whose work is both critically and popularly acclaimed in Japan and the English speaking world—- is significantly more successful and accomplished than I am. He is even a more accomplished long distance runner than me—- for decades, he has run a marathon a year and feels disappointed when he finishes over 4 hours; I have only run 5 marathons, none of them under 4 hours, and have made a vow to the moon and stars to never even register for one again. But I kind of think Murakami and I have the same personality. Or at least, we would understand each other well. Maybe we would even be buddies? I learned all of this by rereading one of my favorite books about running, Murakami’s ‘What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.’ Let’s get into it.

I first read this book about 10 years ago, and the only thing that had really stayed with me from that read was Murakami’s answer to the titular Raymond Carver allusion was basically “not much.” He says that when he goes running, he thinks about the run that he is doing and little to nothing else. I am the same way—- I don’t go running to think about lesson plans or come up with ideas for vacations. I don’t mull over the latest political source of stress, or try to decide whether we should confront my son’s teacher over some perceived unfair treatment. In fact, if any of those things intrude on my run, it kind of ruins the experience. I think about how my body is feeling, how far I’ve gone, how far I have left to go. I do math in my head computing pace and distance. I compare this run to other runs I’ve done in the past and assess my performance. Ordinarily, my brain is constantly running—- evaluating what I’ve done in the past, making plans for the future, anticipating what is likely to happen and what I should do in response, reading deep into social interactions to divine what people actually meant and whether I responded appropriately… it’s a lot. So I enjoy running because it allows me to shut off that part of my brain and just be in the present moment—- other than running, I’ve been able to achieve the same effect playing chess, reading a good novel, and being an alcoholic, nothing else seems to work. So, as you can see, the author of The Wind Up Bird Chronicle and I are basically the same person.

On this reread of the book, I noticed another key similarity between yours truly and Murakmi. Throughout the book, he describes himself setting arbitrary goals for things that only matter to him, working very hard to achieve them, and then getting very frustrated when he doesn’t meet them. Over and over again in the book, he makes up his mind how far he’s going to run, what races he will complete, what times he will run, etc. In races, he keeps detailed accounting of how many runners he has passed and how many have passed him, and he seems furious with himself when the books don’t balance in his favor. And, importantly, none of these goals mean anything to anyone else. No one, literally no one, will care if he finishes 34th instead of 30th in the triathalon, breaks his streak of years with a marathon, catches back up to the person who passed him early in the race, etc. The only person who cares about these things is him, but in spite of that, or maybe because of that, it really galls him when he doesn’t achieve his goals. And of course, Murakami has both quantitatively and qualitatively achieved more in his life than anyone you will ever meet. He doesn’t need to be an elite distance runner and he knows he never will be. But he has no choice but to continue driving himself toward these random, self selected goals.

I am the same way about my running. I realized a long time ago that no one— not my friends, not my wife, not my students, not my competitors, absolutely no one— really cares how I perform in my races, how much training I’m doing, or any other goals that I set for myself to achieve. People are just as impressed if you tell them that you jogged a 5K that morning as if you tell them you finished 8th in your age group in a half marathon and were twenty seconds faster than at that same race last year, and would have been even faster but this year it was raining… In fact, you usually get the same tshirt for running the 5k as you do for the half, and some of the people who will respect you for doing the shorter distance just think you’re stupid. But I care about these things, just like I care if I decide I’m going to do a 10 mile training run one day but have to cut it to 8 because I’m tired, or if I tell myself I’m going to run every day during a vacation and then have to skip a day because I get sick. I’ve met exactly one person in my life who actually had an opinion about my marathon time—- I told a friend of a friend that my PR was a 4:13 and he said, “That’s why I’d never run a full marathon, I’d hate to find out that was as fast as I could go.” There is no reason whatsoever for me to care what that guy thinks, but that offhand comment has stayed with me better than any compliment I ever received from people who’s opinion I hold dear.

I do the same thing about other aspects of my life as well. Professionally, I’m not as successful as Murakami (although to be fair, there really is no path to becoming an internationally renowned teacher), but I’ve had my share of demonstrated successes and have built a pretty strong career for myself. But I’m not happy unless I hit my self selected benchmarks—- scores students achieve on an AP exam, number of kids who register for my elective classes, Christmas cards with genuinely thoughtful messages from parents, number of essays graded in a time frame, improvement in student scores from one essay to the next, on and on. And as soon as I achieve one of those benchmarks, I just set a new one or start to recognize how my achievement isn’t actually as impressive as I thought it was going to be. To be clear, none of these have ever affected my evaluations or progress through my career. But they matter to me. Is that a bad thing? If I’m able to recognize it for what it is, and that drive to prove myself has surely had some positive effect on making me a better teacher, is it a negative? I think the key question is whether or not I’m able to turn it off when I need to .

Which leads me to the next key takeaway I had from the book. Burnout. A lot of Murakami’s book is about his struggles to stay enthused about running. He starts the book with the premise that he doesn’t really have an explanation for why he wanted to become a runner, it just seemed like the right thing to do, so he started doing it and then just kept doing it. But he is also aware that his passion for running is changing, and he is anxious about what to do about it. Some of this is because of aging, but he also highlights an ultramarathon he ran that caused a permanent shift in the way he thought about running. Somewhere in the midst of his 50+ mile ultra, he stopped thinking about running and exhaustion in the same way and did some form of disassociation about it, and it stayed with him long after the race. He just didn’t want to do it anymore, or at least not in the same way. Murakami’s response to this is to take up triatholons, which has at least temporarily solved the problem.

I haven’t had this happen to me as a runner, at least in part because I’m never in my life going to put myself through an ultramarathon. But it did happen to me professionally. For about 15 years, I was a very successful Speech and Debate coach at my school. First as an assistant and then as the head coach at my school, I coached and helped coach state champions and national finalists. I hosted huge tournaments at my school and managed all the admin tasks successfully. I’m actually in the hall of fame for coaching in Indiana. But year after year, I fell short of the specific goals I had set for myself or, if we achieved them, I immediately discounted them and recognized all the ways they really weren’t that impressive. I developed a few goals that I was unable to achieve, no matter how hard I tried. And I burned out—- it stopped being fun. The things that I used to put up with in order to do the parts of coaching that I enjoyed felt more and more burdensome. I was having less and less fun in the moment, instead always thinking about what would happen next, what was going wrong, and how I was not working hard enough to meet my expectations. I started to get angry at people, and I started avoiding responsibilities because I didn’t want to deal with what I thought of as failure. And then I quit.

I’m glad I did—- quitting was also motivated in a big way by the growth of my family and my responsibilities there, and those are a lot more rewarding uses of my time. But I’ve tried to take some important lessons away from that experience. In his book, Murakami talks about nurturing his love of running back to health like a delicate plant. I’m doing the same thing with my career right now—- I’m done coaching, but honestly my passion for teaching was in rough shape as well a few years ago. But I’m not giving up on that. Instead I’m focusing on the things I enjoy about it, giving that delicate seedling plenty of sunlight and water, and trying not to turn into a competitive jerk about it in the process. I like working with kids, and I like teaching English and Speech. I don’t want to lose that.

So, running. This is a blog about me training to run 5 marathons in 4 weeks across 5 states next summer. Is that a ridiculous self imposed goal that is going to wear me down with anxiety? I don’t think so. I’m doing it as a fundraiser for the National Diaper Bank—- if you’ve made it this far, please consider clicking the Donate button up at the top of the page and getting involved in the campaign—- so I’m trying to keep the focus on things other than my own achievement. I’m also tying my running project to my love of travel—- I’m going to see parts of the country I’ve never visited, do a lot of camping, run from a grizzly bear, etc. And the number one goal of my training is to not get hurt again and to have fun in the process. If that means compromising my other goals, then that is what I’ll do. Let’s see if I can hold myself to that…