What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional

Life is basically unfair. But even in a situation that’s unfair, I think it’s possible to seek out a kind of fairness.

As I run I tell myself to think of a river. And clouds. But essentially I’m not thinking of a thing. All I do is keep on running in my own cozy, homemade void, my own nostalgic silence. And this is a pretty wonderful thing. No matter what anybody else says.

I have only a few reasons to keep on running, and a truckload of them to quit. All I can do is keep those few reasons nicely polished.

We decided we’d go to bed soon after it got dark, and wake up with the sun. To our minds this was natural, the kind of life respectable people lived.

They put up with such strenuous training, and where did their thoughts, their hopes and dreams, disappear to? When people pass away, do their thoughts just vanish?

The total amount of running I’m doing might be going down, but at least I’m following one of my basic rules for training: I never take two days off in a row. Muscles are like work animals that are quick on the uptake. If you carefully increase the load, step by step, they learn to take it. As long as you explain your expectations to them by actually showing them examples of the amount of work they have to en‍

endure, your muscles will comply and gradually get stronger.

you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform— or perhaps distort—yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality. Whew!

just have to accept it, and make do with what I can get. One of the realities of life.