Running to change

I am reading a great book right now by a guy called Haruki Murakami. It's called "What I talk about when I talk about running". There are two things I picked up from the first pages of the book that hooked me into his book, and him as a person - he is a writer, and he is a runner. These are three of my main interests too, and considering he loves music and also used to run a bar, I feel a strong connection with the guy...

He is in his 50's now, and still runs a marathon every year. His book is a kind of mini-biography tied together around the 3 big themes of his life, and especially he describes some of the turning points in his life. The real key was when he decided to become a writer. At that time, he owned and ran a bar in Tokyo, and was trying to write and work at the same time. But the two lifestyles were not suited, and at a certain moment he made a decision.

To be able to do what he really wanted to do - write - Murakami realised he would have to change his lifestyle. His normal day was working at his jazz bar until 3am, sleeping 'til midday and snatching some hours to write before going back to work. But he realised that the most creative hours of his day were the first few in the morning. So his work and life did not fit with this at all.

He decided to commit two years of his life to writing a novel, even though he still had debt from the purchase of the bar some years before. It was a risk, but he felt it was the best thing to do, to suit who he was and who he wanted to be. He was 33 when he made this decision.

He also decided to go to bed at 10pm, and get up before 5. It was a complete shift, and he lost friends who were used to his bar-work-life combination. He accepted that because he knew it was the only way to get the best out of his abilities.

But Murakami found that one other part of his life lost balance. There was a lot of physical work in his job in the bar, and therefore he stayed fit - this changed after a few months of sitting at the desk and puttng the pounds on. So to keep in balance with his decision, he re-kindled an interest in a sport he could do anytime - long distance running.

His new life as a writer suited the running. And he started to fit his life - daily plan, diet - around the running. He set himself the target to run 6 days a week, and to write a certain volume in a certain period. Then he built his life around these two priorities.

It turns out that he sees many parallels in these two major pursuits. He describes a marathon as being a similar project to a novel. It is a long term thing, and to achieve it, you need a plan, and most of all you need to set the pace in both preparation (training, or research) and doing the task itself (running the actual marathon or writing the novel). And once you have that pace, you have to concentrate hard to keep it. In short - plan; commit; stay committed.

In the last 10 years, I have tried a bit of running. At times, I have done quite a bit - including running 5 half marathons and quite a few 10km runs - but I never really got serious about it. I never made the kinds of decisions that this writer made to be able to get the best out of my ability to run.

And yet, I know that when I run regularly, a series of positive qualities develop. I become more clear-headed; have more discipline; lose weight; I feel stronger mentally; am more creative and write more than any other time; and I feel better about myself. Despite all of this, I always get side-tracked by work, friends, holiday, just not feeling like it, losing concentration, all pulled together by a bunch of excuses to enable me not to have to commit to something which, I deep down believe, is something I can gain so much from as a person.

The same goes with writing, with even less output than the running. The most I have achieved is a few short stories here and there, completing a couple of creative writing courses, and getting down an intermittent diary called "Morning Pages" (at least this has yielded a dozen notebooks of scribbles first thing in the morning from the last 8 years). I never made the commitment truly to develop it.

In a previous piece about what I think about when the plane is "going down", I wrote that my main wish was to have 6 months off. But I think I was not clear with myself. The reasons for having the time off are followed by two massive desires - to write, and to run. To take time to do two things that feel good and right when I do them. And to use the time to change my life and form new habits that are truly in tune with my real and raw character.

I realise too that saying I need 6 months off to make the change is a way of hiding from the truth - I have simply not been prepared to make the decisions to change, and take the actions and accept the consequences of those changes. That won't be different if I have 6 months off, unless I really commit.

It's inspiring to read about somebody who did make those kinds of decisions, and who has followed the path and consequences of those decisions for over 20 years. It is an amazing co-incidence to find somebody with the same interests and some of the same choices ahead of them, and to look back on how he managed those decisions.

As we move towards 2009, I feel some big and radical changes coming.