what talk about when i talk about running

He has a low pulse rate (triathletes are obsessed with their pulse rates) and wears Mizuno running shoes. We learn of his sleeping patterns, including his preference for a post-lunch nap which, lucky man, leaves him feeling totally refreshed. We get an insight into doubts and insecurities when he first started out as a writer, and what he sees as a novelist's greatest qualities - number one is talent, then focus, then endurance the read across to running in qualities two and three is obvious enough not to need stating.

Non-runners should not be put off by the title of the book, a play on Raymond Carver's What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, because while the neuroses and obsessions of the runner leap from every page, along the way we learn little things about Murakami the writer and Murakami the man.

As I read, I began to wonder whether I could write a novel with a first-person narrator who becomes more than narrator, a central character too, like 'K' in Sputnik Sweetheart. I was reading his Sputnik Sweetheart, the story of a man's love for a woman involved in a lesbian relationship, replete with his usual themes of loneliness and worries about where people fit in their society. My publisher doesn't really want me to talk about them till they're out, and certainly doesn't want me talking about the second one until the first is published (November, since you ask it's about a psychiatrist and called All in the Mind.)īut it is difficult to review this book without acknowledging the role Murakami played in the second one, which will hopefully be out some time next year. I have done one marathon and written two novels, neither yet published. He has done 25 marathons and written 11 novels. He is in a different class to me, as runner and novelist, and throughout he gives the sense that he cannot be one without being the other. Now, also like him, my running is accompanied by constant worries about ageing, reflected in ever slower times.

I did have a plan to run 50 miles on my 50th birthday last year but a cycling injury to my calf - like Murakami, I also do triathlon - grounded me.

What talk about when i talk about running