What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

One by one, I’ll face the tasks before me and complete them as best I can. Focusing on each stride forward, but at the same time taking a long-range view, scanning the scenery as far ahead as I can. I am, after all, a long-distance runner.

I never spoke to her (I’m too shy), and of course don’t even know her name. But seeing her face every morning as I ran was one of life’s small pleasures.

It’s precisely because of the pain, precisely because we want to overcome that pain, that we can get the feeling, through this process, of really being alive—

I’ll be happy if running and I can grow old together.

give it everything I have, endure what needs enduring, and am able, in my own way, to be satisfied.

Through experience you learn how to compensate for your physical shortcomings.

through the act of writing I wanted to sort out what kind of life I’ve led,

For a runner like me, what’s really important is reaching the goal I set myself, under my own power.

I’m going to speak in front of an undefined large group of people, I grow confused and frustrated when faced by that teeming ocean of words.