When I talk

I am just about finished with Haruki Murakami's marvelous biopic, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. It interests me in many ways, the two most important, perhaps, being his willingness to share insights on writing, inspiration and interpretation, and, of course, his take on running and all that that entails. Maybe, as critics have suggested, his sums are much greater than his parts, as in, "This is what I thought about when running today". I do this all the time, and a great many RCVman blog entries are a direct result of the post run analysis of an endorphin induced brain storm. One of the many insights gleaned from his writing on this subject is this little gem: There are three reasons why one does not achieve their race day goals:

1) Lack of training,
2) Lack of training,
3) Lack of training.

Boy oh boy, ain't that the truth!!!!!!

Here is an excerpt from a review of his style and a link from The New Yorker about his running. The article was a main ingredient of the chapter I read last night at the end of a rather interesting and challenging day.

Murakami has long been obsessed with subterranean realms; his stories often wander into physical and psychic netherworlds. At the becalmed center of even his most extravagantly plotted fiction lies a steadying imperative: to make sense of the senseless. (...) Murakami not only renders the banalities of day-to-day life with a precision that borders on the tactile, he somehow evokes the queasy coexistence of something unnameable and altogether more bizarre.
Dennis Lim / The Village Voice / 12.6.2001

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_murakamihttp://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/06/09/080609fa_fact_murakami

Photo by LE from 2008 Ironman Hawaii. Could be labeled, "What I think about when on Alii Drive with 20 miles to go."