What I Think About When I Think About Running

A few weeks ago, a fellow bookseller, knowing I love to read and love to run, recommended Haruki Murakami‘s latest book, What I Think About When I Think About Running.  There were several things about this book that appealed to me: I do love to run; I enjoyed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles and several short stories written by Murakami; the title is a reference to the title of Raymond Carver‘s second short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.  I’m a Ray Carver fan and have a second printing of that book.  (Murakami notes in his book that he contacted the late Carver’s wife to get her OK to adapt the title.)  As luck would have it, I spotted the book at Half Price Books less than a week after the recommendation, and snagged it.

It’s not a great book, but it was easy to get through, and did a pretty good job of explaining why distance running and novel writing suit each other.  Murakami has run about six miles per day, almost every day, for over a quarter of a century, partly thanks to the open schedule of a successful writer.  He runs a marathon each year, and has started entering triathlons.  He’s a jazz lover but listens to classic rock on his iPod while he runs, and sometimes works out speeches and other writing projects.

I started thinking about what I think about when I think about running.  It’s pretty simple, really.  I think of myself as a perpetual motion machine, running down wilderness trails, desert highways, and backroads, like Forrest Gump.  And I will here admit that I have long been a running nerd: in the long period of my thirties and forties, I didn’t run but often dreamed of running.  So, a couple of years ago, I started running again.  And I’m hooked, just like I was in my late twenties.  I sho ain’t no perpetual running machine, but I’m working on it.

This blog is related to music, not running or novel writing.  What I think about when I’m running is music.  90% of the time, anyway.  When I’m on a running trail, I listen to my iPod–all kinds of music, from the twenties to current.  But most of the time, I run on bike trails in the woods.  No iPods allowed.  The bikers rule these trails, and they go faster than the very few runners and hikers that use the trails.  So it’s up to me to be aware when a biker is approaching from behind and step to the right, out of the way.

When I’m running my 3 1/2-to-seven miles on the nature trails, I’m thinking about music.  I’m working out three-part vocal arrangements of standards for my trio or I’m working out lyrics or arrangements of my own songs.  It puts me into the zone Murakami refers to, and makes the running time go by quickly. 

For the past month, I’ve used my trail time to learn lyrics, because I’ve been in rehearsal for a musical revue, The Spectacular Senior Follies.  Lots of old songs, from “Strike Up the Band” to “Crazy Rhythm.”  It was daunting, but, thanks to the trail running regime, they’re locked in.  I worked out how to approach my solo on “They Didn’t Believe Me,” a great Jerome Kern tune from 1914.  I imagined singing and stepping and passing hats on our most difficult group number, “Abba Dabba (Monkey and Chimp).”  When the show’s over Sunday, I’ll go back to thinking about what I usually think about when I’m running–where to put that sixth chord, what to rhyme with “admiring.”  That kind of thing. 

Trail running and the music in my mind: a perfect combination of hobbies.

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