6 Quotes From What I Talk About When I Talk About Running That Made Me Rethink Running And Life
I wish I had found this book sooner.

Haruki Murakami’s book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running isn’t an ordinary running book. It’s more of a meditation and memoir about a man’s life experiences that he gained as a runner.
I wish I had picked up this book sooner as many of the thought processes Murakami wrote about I can relate to.
There were some quotes from the book that stood out to me. One of my favorite forms of critical thinking is to take quotes from pieces that people have written and expand upon it in my own words.
To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed — and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage.
Often when we set goals that we are excited about, we sprint off the starting blocks at too fast of a pace. This causes us to quickly burn out and continue at a crawling pace. This ends up leading to discouragement that maybe we aren’t cut out to complete our goal.
It takes a lot of concentration to set your pace steady. When running a race like a marathon, it’s tempting to move faster when we are feeling good instead of the speed we told ourselves that we would stay at.
Finding a rhythm that works for you is an important life skill. There may be a long term work project that you need to work on. Setting the rhythm to keep your work consistently is what will lead to success.

It’s pretty thin, the wall separating healthy confidence and unhealthy pride.
It’s great to be confident in yourself but there is a point where it can become toxic. There have been many times where I’ve had to ask myself why I run.
I run because I am looking for a way to toughen myself mentally and see what I can do. Anytime that I’ve made a running goal just because I think it would look cool to run a race, I inevitably fizzled out in my training. The ego part of me wanted to run a race without thinking about how hard the challenge would to train for it.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Say you’re running and you start to think, Man this hurts, I can’t take it anymore. 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.
If you run far enough and long enough, you’re bound to experience pain. Suffering is more of a mental state. When running a race, the option to quit is often staring at us in the face but we choose to move on anyways despite the pain.
Every time you choose to get up, you gain a little more mental resilience. Often quitting is the greatest suffering of all. The regret of leaving something on the table hurts more than the short term pain of the race.
Emotional hurt is the price a person has to pay in order to be independent.
Being a people pleaser is harmful to one’s life. Often you will have to disappoint some people to do what is best for you.
It’s tough to be an independent person in a world that is so demanding. We go to a job, listen to a boss and find our place in the company machine. We may even feel obligated to respond to every text or DM that comes our way.
Sometimes, you or someone else may be a little hurt from you letting them down.
Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you’re going to while away the years, it’s far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive than in a fog, and I believe running helps you do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that’s the essence of running, and a metaphor for life — and for me, for writing as well. I believe many runners would agree.
Running isn’t the most optimal thing for one’s health. That doesn’t mean that it makes it unhealthy like eating fast food or smoking. If most runners were looking for something that would optimize their health they would probably walk a lot and strength train instead.
Most runners I have met run because they have a personal goal for themselves. Running pushes you to a physical limit that I have yet to find in another sport.
Running has many lessons that it can teach that apply to life. They are lessons that cannot be learned through reading a book. They can only be learned during each foot strike.

Nothing in the real world is as beautiful as the illusions of a person about to lose consciousness.
Anyone who runs a marathon knows that the first sip of a beer or water after a race hits different.
When you physically exert yourself, everything else in life seems to turn up. The simple pleasures in life seem to matter more.
Whenever I have had experiences of extreme exhaustion, I am reminded of what matters to me in my life.
Another feeling that I have had is one of extreme presence. I’m not thinking about my past regrets or scared about my future, the only thing that I am thinking about is living in the present moment.
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