What I talk about when I talk about running - Murakami

 

Foreword Suffering is optional 

• dodge: esquive
• treatise: traité
• shave: rasage
• stray off: s'éloigner
• painstaking: pointilleux
• grueling: éreintant
• dubbed: surnommer

• Une personne qui a besoin d'écrire pour se comprendre.
• Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
• The hurt part is an unavoidable reality, but whether or not you can stand any more is up to the runner himself. This pretty much sums up the most important aspect of marathon running.

One Who's Going to Laugh at Mick Jagger?

• muggy: étouffant
• lounging: se relaxer
• inlet: crique
• tack: approche
• whisked: fouetter
• scorching: brûlant
• abstruse: abscon
• speck: petite tâche
• slumped: avachi
• outwardly: extérieurement
• farsighted: hypermétrope
• waterfowl: gibier d'eau
• floes: banquises
• crisp: craquant
• whizzing: mouvement à toute allure
• kink: bizarrerie 
• flab: graisse superflue
• despised: méprisé
• to brag: se vanter
• to groan: grogner
• to scream: hurler
• void: vide

• During the mornings, when it's cool, I sit at my desk, writing all sorts of things.
• To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is important thing for long-term projects.
• Over this period, I've jogged almost every day, run at least one marathon every year - twenty-three up till now.
• Running without a break for more than two decades has also made me stronger, both physically and emotionally.
• I am the kind of person who doesn't find it painful to be alone. I find spending an hour or two every day alone, not speaking to anyone, as well as four or five hours alone at my desk, to be neither difficult nor boring.
• Maintaining my own silent, private time, is important to help me keep my mental well-being.
• And one of the results of running a little farther than usual is that I become that much stronger.

Two Tips on Becoming a Running Novelist

• a breather: une pause
• stocky: trapu
• wicked: méchant
• wee: pipi
• spurt: giclée
• reeked: empesté
• slacker: fainéant
• to stint: lésiner
• to dredge: déterrer
• to slough it off: se débarrasser
• belated: tardif
• qualms: scrupules

• Since failure was not an option, I'd have to give everything I had.
• Because I was always tired and felt like I was competing against the clock as I wrote, I was never able to concentrate.
• I'am the kind of person who has to totally commit to whatever I do.
• I could go to bed early and get up early.
• The most important things can't be learned at school.
• "Does a runner at your level ever feel like you'd rather not run today, like you don't want to run and would rather just sleep in?" He stared me and then, in a voice that made it abundantly clear how stupid he thought the question was, replied, "Of course. All the time!"
• When we lace up our running shoes early in the morning we feel exactly the same way.
• You're able to make a living as a novelist, working at home, setting your own hours, so you don't have to commute on a packed train or site through meetings. Don't you realize how fortunate you are? Compared to that, running an hour around the neighborhood is nothing, right?
• Just as with school, you enter it, learn something, and then it's time to leave.
• You can't please everybody.
• I began to eat mostly vegetables, with fish as my main source of protein.

Three Athens in Midsummer - Running 26.2 Miles for the First Time

• to stave off: éviter
• to rack up: accumuler
• hobbling down: boitiller
• hindsight: recul
• admonish: réprimander
• jitters: frousse
• baffle: déconcerter
• squeaky: grinçant
• to outrun: distancer
• to whiz: siffler
• stray: errant
• dreary: morne
• bead: perle
• anchovy: anchois
• scent: odeur
• barren: stérile
• shutter: obturateur
• grate: grincer
• blazing: embrasé
• utter: absolu
• grueling: exténuant
• spigot: robinet
• to snip off: découper
• ghastly: épouvantable

• I was basically trying to rack up the distance, not worrying about anything, but steadily increasing my pace and running as hard as I could.
• Doing it gradually is important so you don't burn ut.
• The point is to reach the peak of exhaustion about a month before.
• I have to listen very carefully to the feedback from my body.
• I'd made it a point of pride that no matter how hard things might get, I never walked.
• There are three reasons I failed. Not enough training. Not enough training. And not enough training.
• Train meticulously and rediscover what I was physically capable of. Tighten up all the loose screws, one by one.
• Best to learn from my mistakes and put that lesson into practice the next time around.
• I am writing, in other words, to put my thoughts in some kind of orders.
• Up to nineteen miles I am sure I can run a good time, but past twenty-two miles I run out of fuel and start to get upset at everything. And at the end, I feel like a car that's run out of gas. But after I finish and some time has passed, I forgot all the pain and misery and am already planning how I can run an even better time in the next race. The funny thing is, no matter how much experience I have under my belt, no matter how old I get, it's all just a repeat of what came before.

Four Most of What I Know About Writing Fiction I learned by Running Every Day

• sweltering: étouffant

• I am following one of the basic rules for training: I never take two days in a row.
• Running everyday is a kind of lifeline for me.
• Focus: the ability to concentrate all your limited talents on whatever's critical at the moment.
• I generally concentrate on work for three or four hours every morning.
• As you age you learn to be happy with what you have. That's one of the few good points of growing older.

Five Even If I Had a Long Ponytail Back Then

• cursing: jurer
• glittering: brillant
• acorn: gland
• industrious: travailleur
• barren: stérile
• geese: oies
• honed: aiguisé
• hatchet: hachette
• faithfully: fidèlement
• notch: encoche
• slush: neige fondue
• thaw: dégel
• a tank top: débardeur
• tapering off: diminuer
• brimming: déborder
• to brag: se vanter
• brash: impertinent
• contrived: forcé
• trite: banal
• teeming: grouillant
• plump: bruit sourd
• filthy: sale
• to belt out: beugler

• Seeing a lot of water like every day is probably an important thing for human beings
• I am aware of myself as one tiny piece in the gigantic mosaic of nature. I'm just a replaceable natural phenomenon, like the water in the river that flows under the bridge toward the sea.
• There are plenty of things in this world that are way beyond me, plenty of opponents I can never beat.
• But you need a great deal of energy to create an immune system and maintain it over a long period.
• But, frankly, if I want to write a large scale work, increasing my strength and stamina is a must, and I believe this is something worth doing.
• An unhealthy soul requires a healthy body.
• Running is a great activity to do while memorizing a speech.

Six Nobody Pounded the Table Anymore, Nobody Threw Their Cups

• whimsical: fantaisiste
• to swell up: enfler
• excruciating: atroce
• bolt: vis
• cog: roue dentée
• to grit: sabler
• plum: prune
• sour: acide
• seething: bouillonnant 
• pound: frapper
• to waft: flotter
• ragged: irrégulier
• trudging: marcher péniblement
• bellow: beuglement
• fleeting: fugace
• ankle: cheville
• wobbly: branlant
• fallout: conséquence
• halfhearted: peu enthousiaste 
• ratcheted: baisser
• notch: cran
• to stir: mélanger
• to grope: chercher à tâtons 

• No matter how slow I might run, I wasn't about to walk. Break one of my rules once, and I'm bound to break many more.
• Still, the most significant fallout from running the ultramarathon wasn't physical but mental. What I ended up with was a sense of lethargy, and before I knew it, I felt covered by a thin film, something I've since dubbed runner's blues.
• Each time I ran a full marathon, my time went steadily down.
• Maybe the only thing we can do is accept it, without really knowing what's going on.
• Competing against time isn't important. What's going to be much more meaningful to me now is how much I can enjoy myself, whether I can finish twenty six miles with a feeling of contentment.
• I'm nothing more or less than a professional writer who knows his limits, who wants to hold on his abilities and vitality for as long as possible.

Seven Autumn in New York

• Reaching the finish line, never walking, and enjoying the race. These three, in this order, are my goals.
• All I have to go on are experience and instinct. Experience has taught me this: You've done everything you needed to do, and there is no sense in rehashing it. All you can do is wait for the race. And what instinct has taught me is this one thing only: Use your imagination.

Eight 18 Till I Die

• It always feels wonderful to finish a marathon - it's a beautiful achievement - but I wasn't satisfied with the time.
• As long as my body allows, I'll keep on running. Even if my time gets worse.
• I've always done what I felt like doing in life.

Nine At Least He Never Walked

• Learning from experience is what makes the triathlon so much fun.
• If pain weren't involved, who in the world would ever go to the trouble of taking part in sports like the triathlon or the marathon, which demand such an investment of time and energy? Its 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 - or at least a partial sense of it.
• What's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart. To be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts.
• 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.
• For a runner like me, what's really important is reaching the goal I set to myself.

Afterword On Roads All Round the World

• What's on my mind right now?
• But for me, there was the hope that writing this book would allow me to discover my own personal standard. 
• For me, the main goal of exercising is to maintain, and improve, my physical condition in order to keep on writing novels.
• Meanwhile, running for a quarter century makes for a lot of good memories.