Tag Archive: running


When you’re gone you’re gone

Filed under: Music — Leave a comment
April 23, 2018
Dad

My Dad : 20/4/26 – 16/9/86

There’s something sobering about reaching the same age that my Dad was when he died.
He passed aged 60 in 1986 of stomach cancer after being diagnosed just 6 months earlier. Prior to that I never recall him being sick. Being in good health and then being gone is one of the scariest things. More so than those who die after what the newspapers euphemistically call “a long illness”.
I suppose, on balance, it’s better to go quickly than becoming a burden to your loved ones. Dad would have hated that.
I’ve recently found that I suffer from high blood pressure despite my virtual straight-edge lifestyle and relatively stress-free work. This has caused me to find articles about ‘the silent killer’ of a heart condition you don’t know you have until it’s too late.
I don’t smoke, drink in moderation, exercise like a demon and eat what I like to think is a healthy plant-based diet. Maybe I drink too much coffee so I’ve now virtually cut that out too.
I have begun to envy those who don’t seem health conscious in the slightest yet don’t seem any the worse for it.
Most books on ageing and dying refer to the consolation of faith at some point but I don’t believe in an afterlife or in reincarnation so these are useless to me.
The way I feel is that my heart or some other vital organ will give out sooner or later. “Most things may never happen:this one will”, wrote Philip Larkin in Audabe so when I wake in a cold sweat I can’t console myself that I’m worrying about nothing. It’s the very nothingness that is most chilling.
My Dad suffered briefly and then was gone. As a dodo or a doornail.
For now I put morbid fears to one side and keep on training and jogging. I know full well that however fast or far I run the grim reaper will catch me one day but I don’t intend to make it easy for him.

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WHY I RUN

Filed under: Health and fitness — Leave a comment
July 3, 2011

 

marathon man

Me running my first marathon in September 2018

This post is prompted by  The Guardian article yesterday on this topic.

My running career started late.

At school I hated cross-country and would always join the smokers and skivers as soon as I was out not within eyeshot of the teachers. The trick was to run the last two or three minutes gasping as if you had exerted yourself for the complete course.

This implanted the firm belief that running was a form of torture rather than a means of pleasure, an opinion I maintained until well into adulthood.

What changed was that on reaching my mid-40s I realised that the consequence of zero exercise and a pasta-pizza-red wine diet  would result in my entering the third age in the shape of a barrel.

I think you can get away with minimal exercise until you hit 40 and then the onset of middle age spread can take hold if you don’t do battle with it.

The original incentive to get of my ass and move was to lose weight. The other reason was that I realised that I got morose and bear-like if I sat around all day.

I now jog now on average two or three times a week. The most I run is for an hour on a path by the river, otherwise 20 minutes in the park is enough to set me up for the day.

Even with this fairly leisurely programme,  I feel 100% better even though my weight has stabilised rather than dropping dramatically. My argument is  that the fat has been replaced by muscle!

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MURAKAMI – BORN TO RUN (AND WRITE).

Filed under: Books, Fiction — Leave a comment
August 15, 2010

Haruki Murakami is a writer I recently discovered after a friend gave me a copy of the 2003 novel Kafka On The Shore. I was  impressed by the vivid characters and the immediacy of his style that (in translation at least) is intelligent yet not self consciously literary. His writing has an elegant economy that you find in American writers like F.Scott Fitzgerald and Raymond Carver , both of whom ,not coincidentally, Murakami has translated into Japanese.

To learn more about the man behind the fiction I turned to What I Talk About When I Talk About Running which he wrote between 2005 and 2006. The title is a variant on a short story collection by Carver called ‘What we talk about when we talk about love’.

Murakami describes it as a memoir although the focus is quite a narrow one in that it centres mainly on his twin addictions of long distant running and novel-writing. These two activities are, for him, indelibly linked.  In terms of inner motivation, commitment and self-discipline he says that “writing novels and running full marathons are very much alike”. Both are solitary pursuits which are not done to gain outward approval but rather to satisfy personal needs. He confesses to being obsessive and to enjoying his own company – “I’m the type of person who doesn’t find it painful to be alone” he admits.

Murakami does not suggest that running guarantees you will live longer, but recommends it as a way to maximise  your capacity and ability to make the most of your waking hours. The focus and stamina needed for writing is equivalent to that required for serious running.

He claims not to be competitively minded, yet his running goes well beyond being merely recreational as a means to keeping fit and healthy. He has taken part in over 20 marathons, one ultra-marathon (62 miles in one day!) and numerous triathlons.

His practical insights into what it takes to be a good novelist are both inspiring and daunting. The book is full of valuable tips for budding authors yet gives no illusions that completing a novel is an easy task. He argues that training to be a long distance runner and honing your skills as a novelist demand a “persistent repetition” and means that you must be prepared to continually push yourself to the limits of your potential.

He says that to write a novel you need to maintain a consistent level of discipline for anything up to two years:  “if you concentrate on writing three or four hours a day and feel tired after a week of this, you’re not going to be able to write a long work”.

I was particularly interested to learn that each day he stops writing at the point when he feels he can write more, in the same way that he plans his running programme so that the exhilaration carries over to the next day. The process is infinite : “No matter how much I write I never reach a conclusion”.

This is a book that gives fascinating and honest insights into what drives this great novelist. If you love running, writing or reading you’ll find plenty to inspire you.

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