LUCKY

One of the gifts my running life gives me is the ability to see the places I visit in a different way. And one of the gifts my job gives me is the perk of traveling to some great places. Last week I zig-zagged for five miles through the French Quarter just as the sun was coming up. Running at dawn allows me to see places, I think, as they really are--when the day is just beginning and the streets are clear of tourists and the real people who scrape out their livings in the shadows are going about their business. New Orleans was a particular treat at that time of day as I ran down Rue Bourbon, literally kicking my way through the flotsam of the previous night's revelry. A few frat boys were still upright here and there and staggering down the street, but mostly it was quiet. I caught sight of more than one stripper finishing her shift, leaving by the side door, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt now, a weary look in her eyes somehow giving her away. I finished my loop at the Cafe' Du Monde and walked back to my hotel as the sun rose over the river, a bag of beignets clutched tight to my chest and a big cup of strong, chicory coffee warming me up. This is how you see a city when you are a runner.

I have learned to tune out the irritation of air travel by using the time to read. A lot. A plane ride is more often than not an opportunity to consume most of a book, if not all of it. The flight to New Orleans was the perfect amount of time to finish Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It is a small book, created from a journal Murakami kept as he trained for one of the many New York City Marathons he has run. I opened the cover to the first page ready to be inspired as a runner, but most of what I read about running I already fully understand and appreciate. This is not a book to spur on someone considering taking up running. After so many years, Murakami is one of those runners who have been running long enough that it is altogether a part of his very being. This I get.

What surprised me and knocked me upside the head a bit was realizing that Marukami was talking as much about writing as he was about running. And what he showed me is how very closely related the two things are.

I became a runner by not allowing myself an alternative. My alarm went off, my feet hit the ground, I was out the door. No matter what. It is still that way, but now it is very much like breathing. I hardly think of it at all. I long ago came to a point where I simply could not imagine my life any other way. My first run may have lasted ten minutes, but I was back the next day for another ten minutes. I began to steadily add to my time on the runs until one day, I looked up, and it was no big deal to run for forty minutes. This is a lesson we seemingly must learn more than once, that the only way to succeed at anything is sheer and dogged determination. We may be lucky sometimes or we may be blessed with innate ability and talent, but these are things that can only carry us so far. Always, it comes down to simply putting in the time, saying to yourself, I am going to do this.

I do not tolerate the making of excuses for not running. I simply do it. And, after reading Murakami's book, I realize that so should it be with writing. For too long I have allowed myself alternatives and excuses when what it really comes to is that I simply must do it. Sweat it out each day. No excuses. I should begin as I did with my running. Ten minutes today. Again tomorrow. With the goal of one day looking up to find that it is no big thing to write for forty minutes. Like the running, it matters only that I do it and that I do it without fail. There is a phrase that pushes me along when I am training for an event or to reach a new running goal. It comes from the consummate book about running, John Parker Wilson's cult classic, Once A Runner. The hero of that book, Quenton Cassidy, speaks of miles of trials, trials of miles. It is a reminder to me of what it means to grind. Marukami's book let me know that running is not the only thing to which it applies.


A quick postscript: Do not forget the reading list if you are looking for book suggestions. I do not blog about every book I read, but you can find a list of all that I have been reading here.