The title is based on Murakami’s great little book What I talk about when I talk about running. Very clearly, this is not that. Murakami’s book is based on years and years of diary entries, written in his typical poetic style, with the fluency of a professional.

He’s also taking running much further, first training for marathons and then tackling triathlons.  My own version is looking back at years and years of lackadaisical, amateur jogging, none too intensive but still one of the few constants punctuating my teenage and adult years. What his account and mine have in common is that we use running as a lens to remember some events of our lives through.

I can trace the start of my running to my teenage years 15-18. My parents encouraged us to have a regular schedule of after-school activities - in Belgium school doesn’t provide them, so it’s up to parents to sort it out - a bit of music, a bit of sports, a bit of whatever we fancied. I’d been a jack-of-all-trades forever, trying a succession of sports for a year or two and then moving on.

I don’t remember what motivated me to start athletics that year. There was a club operating on the local running track in town, within biking distance. Probably my mother proposed it, and I responded with “yes, alright, I’ll give it a go”, and kept on past the trial.

I wasn’t particularly good. There were some local track stars, club favourites, who received special attention and were toured around competitions in the region. I wasn’t one of them. In fact, I couldn’t even imagine me being one of them - I wasn’t competitive at all, not for this. I think I’d already decided sports were a secondary activity for me. Brains was where I had a shot. In the meantime I was going through the motions, getting exercise because it was expected of me, not really questioning it but not being too enthousiastic about it either.

I found some running companions to chat to as we circled the red polyurethane track. I had one of my biggest high school crushes on one of the better runners, a lanky dark-eyed boy who was a couple of years older than me, but looked smooth faced and androgynous enough not to scare off my teenage self. While we ran round and round the track I snuck glances at his light-footed frame, not even dreaming of starting a chat. Having spent all my formative years at an all girls’ school, I had no clue on how to approach boys, let alone good-looking ones.

Understandably, there wasn’t any reciprocity. At the time it felt like all the boys at the club fancied this one girl. She was skinny and blonde. I suppose she was pretty. Most of all, she seemed to have been born with heat exchange superpowers, or maybe she was an android. Where at the end of the training most of us were panting, red faced and sweating, she floated off the track looking like she’d just modeled for a sports wear ad. What was even the point. On top of that she was of the ‘mean girl’ variety, haughty in a way that probably hid some insecurity, but didn’t make her any more likeable.

Ten year later, when we were in our twenties, my high school best friend invited me over to watch the Mister Belgium finals on TV, an event I previously wasn’t even aware of. My athletics crush was one of the finalists! We drank some white wine and giggled our way through the event. He got second place, which shows that at least my taste was mainstream. The fact he participated at all is a pretty solid indication that it wouldn’t have worked out. He was a local boy, going to the town school, embedded in the community, and I was already dreaming of taking off as far as humanly possible.

Back to the athletics, the main reason I lasted a full three years is that I tried a bunch of disciplines. I ran for a while, trying different distances, being best at longish sprints like 400 and 800m. Then I switched to hurdles for a bit, which was interesting, but I didn’t have the explosive speed you need for it. So I drifted over to throwing stuff, like javelines, disks and weights, with the more sturdy girls. While I didn’t shine at it either, it was something else to try.

Just shows that for me, running didn’t start with a flash and a bang, like a romantic lifetime infatuation. I didn’t run and go ‘I feel wonderful, this is what I want to do, forever’. It was vaguely satisfying. It was a way to sweat off those pesky hormones, to stay fit. I got to check out some nice legs from afar. It was ok.