What I Think About When He Talks About Running

Run by ll_browneyes_ll

I was cruising down the escalator (shouldn’t this be called descender?) from the train platform when I told this photographer guy from work about the little book I was almost finished with and still holding on the way to the other station line. I didn’t know, I began my monologue, that this writer I’ve been reading ran a marathon almost every year since he was 33. That’s also about the same time he started to take writing seriously as his profession. He just ran, I continued, and he’s still doing it until now, what is he, like 60. Grabe, no? And I thought, yeah, that’s a lot. But since then, he’s also published book after book of stories and novels one after the other. No gap that will leave a runner behind his target time. It’s apparent of, course–what he’s saying–that writing’s a lot like running. Only it’s too lazy to jump onto such a cute catchphrase. It’s better to run through (hah!) his trainings and marathons. Which reminded me how many times I’ve attempted to run regularly, no writing metaphor intended, and failed. But I understand him when talks about pace, about the music he listened to on the go, how it’s a loner’s sport, how there’s usually nothing so extraordinary to inspire writing, that it’s usually just running on and on.