One runner mentioned a mantra his older brother, also a runner, taught him, and which he’d been thinking about ever since he started running. It goes something like, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is a choice.” Let’s say you’re running and you’re thinking to yourself, “This hurts, man, I can’t go any further.” The pain is a reality you can’t avoid, but whether you can bear it or not is up to you. This perfectly encapsulates the important aspect of running a marathon.<\/p>\n
It’s been ten years since I first had the idea for a book about running, but the years have passed while I’ve tried one way or another, without ever truly settling on writing it. Running is such a mysterious subject, and I’ve found it difficult to define what I want to say about it.<\/p>\n
But at a certain point, I resolved to write honestly about my thoughts and feelings regarding running and to commit to my own style. I found this to be the only way forward, and I began writing little by little in the summer of 2005, finishing in the fall of 2006. Except for the passages where I quoted from my earlier writings, the body of this book is a record of my thoughts and feelings without delay. I observed that writing honestly about running and writing honestly about myself were almost the same thing. So I suppose it’s perfectly fine to read this as a kind of running-based memoir.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A reflective journey that blends running, writing, and life, in which the author explores his personal experiences and thoughts on discipline, endurance, and solitude in a quiet and profound style that reveals much about the human psyche.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":26573,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_cat":[905,949,878,854],"product_tag":[1252,1226,1359,1191],"class_list":{"0":"post-26575","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-world-literature","7":"product_cat-general-literature","8":"product_cat-sports-and-entertainment","9":"product_cat-biography-and-memoirs","10":"product_tag-feelings","11":"product_tag-human-development","12":"product_tag-philosophy","13":"product_tag-world-literature","14":"pa_book-author-haruki-murakami","16":"first","17":"onbackorder","18":"sale","19":"shipping-taxable","20":"purchasable","21":"product-type-simple"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/26575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=26575"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/awraqonline.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=26575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}