Murakami Haruki
L'arte di correre

A burst of very short and simple sentences using a generally unpretentious vocabulary for an easy read that flows through your hands like water, without hiccups. Perhaps too easily, because it lasts only a scant handful of hours. I'd like to believe everything Murakami wrote, but in reality, it's a testimony which, by contrast (in the things it leaves unresolved and doesn't put on paper), has a bittersweet flavor.

I remember two years ago, arriving drained of energy at the finish line, I was disappointed and in a gray mood because of the modest result achieved; a cardboard smile as with every pat on the back and word of consolation I wanted to respond with curses. The fact is, every runner/athlete (amateur or professional) has an excuse to justify a subpar performance. Unfortunately, almost always, the times are more obese and round than expected; perhaps because, in our heads, we are better than the reality that, with an inflexible tick, lays bare unequivocally. That day, dehydration issues were all the rage: it was an exceptionally hot July day even at 2000 meters high. Whatever the case, after a few hours, while talking with this guy, that guy, and the other guy, I saw an elderly man (later I learned he was over 80) coming down the final straight. In no time, people stopped what they were doing to perch on the barriers like ravenous vultures armed with applause and cameras; I could do nothing but meet his gaze, and he returned it. Ali throwing that punch at Foreman: me, Foreman.
I was convinced that I would find, in those gray eyes, immense satisfaction, but instead, it was clear only an enormous relief for an agony, a torture, finally coming to an end. That gentleman was galaxies away from being free, happy, content, and proud of what he had accomplished. He seemed more like an animal trapped in a zoo or an antique piece in a museum, at the mercy of photos and words of admiration. The race had taken over his body, and once a year, he was condemned to demonstrate to his friends and acquaintances his extraordinary willpower and endurance, his ability not to age. Not a personal pleasure, but more the impossibility of failing others' expectations. I mentally photographed him, and I placed that shot among the gray creases of my mind with the shitty hope that that memory might save me from such a situation. The next decision was to reduce the number of mountain running races, cultivate entirely different interests, and stop running for 4 months a year; in this way, resuming is something akin to the wellness and pleasure that years ago made me start. But at the end of the season, after 120-150 km of elevation gain, I am an addict: from a medical standpoint, our body's glands, with running, release a natural drug into the bloodstream: endorphin.

In these 150 autobiographical pages, Murakami talks about his late and sudden love for running and extols its virtues. In a rather rhetorical and banal way, he describes running as a challenge with oneself, a mental trial, as well as a physical one, for a discipline that changed his life: indeed, exerting oneself with constancy has many contact points with the tenacity and perseverance needed to write a novel. Solitary running suits the author's reserved personality, who does not despise socializing, but certainly does not seek it. Running, he enters another dimension, a bubble, also finding ideas for his books, and he puts himself to the test. Up to the age of 45, with a rigorous and methodical training system, he managed to improve or maintain his marathon performances until he had to yield to the evidence of physical decline. At that point, he went into crisis. Although he doesn't write it openly, competition, the quest for time and approval from his acquaintances progressively overshadowed the joy of covering long distances, leaving space for routine. The 4-hour threshold in the marathon was like the chasm, the abyss from which it is impossible to climb back, and so, before experiencing the shame of the number 4 on his watch display, he decides to change distance (first) and subsequently sports activity. All because with each new marathon, the final straight was increasingly empty and colorless, ever further from what he imagined he would walk while training on a tree-lined avenue at sunset.
Murakami plays the ostrich and starts swimming, goes cycling, and takes up triathlon. He writes the title of a song "always 18 years old" on the bike frame, and all of this layers me with a thick blanket of sadness because I believe this Japanese author (whose many other books I wish to read) is condemned to become like that elderly athlete I talked about earlier. Perhaps aging means losing sight; when blind, one cannot realize how futile it is to strive with every effort to deny reality. And the more vigor is used to try to empty the sea with a leaking bucket, the more it leads to ridicule. A ridiculousness worthy of the utmost respect and one I could never laugh at because next time it might be me.

I apologize to you because the lines of “The Art of Running” do not talk about what I have just vomited, but in those unwritten and implied pages (perhaps only my impression), I found these dry reflections. We, people of amateur runners, have the illusion of practicing a free-spirited sport, but in reality, among charts, chronometers, heart rate monitors, and technological shoes, we end up running in a wheel like bloody hamsters. We fail to live with the mediocrity/normality of results when young, which we justify in the most pathetic ways, and at an advanced age, we deny that physical decline can even exist. The fact that doping is steadily increasing among amateurs seems to me a very interesting topic; not too different from the facelift of a human who cannot accept expressive wrinkles on the face, not too dissimilar from the 40-year-old Peter Pan who enters a nightclub trying to mimic adolescent slang and behavior.

The art of running from my point of view is the ability to move your butt from point A to point B for the mere pleasure of feeling a layer of salt forming on your face. A bit of goosebumps while your legs rotate to their maximum potential. Why should one have these feelings? Well, even though we might be technological, digital, and whatever, deep down we're still animals, and many animals like to run.