Book 335 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Beating the Bonk!

Book – What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir by Haruki Murakami (Part 2/2)

Book Description:

An intimate look at writing, running, and the incredible way they intersect, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is an illuminating glimpse into the solitary passions of one of our greatest artists. While training for the New York City Marathon, Haruki Murakami decided to keep a journal of his progress. The result is a memoir about his intertwined obsessions with running and writing, full of vivid recollections and insights, including the eureka moment when he decided to become a writer. By turns funny and sobering, playful and philosophical, here is a rich and revelatory work that elevates the human need for motion to an art form.

Reflection:

Haruki Murakami says that the hardest part of running any marathon happens after 22 miles!

Why? Per the author, that is when everything starts to break down and the anger sets in. This is when you must accept the fact that you no longer have your best stuff and find a way to push through and finish anyway.

Runners apparently have a term for this, and it is called “bonking”. Bonking, or the sudden onsite of fatigue, happens to everyone due to reasons outside of their control. Physiologically speaking, the body can only store 2,000 calories of glycogen (the fuel you use to run) which usually is exhausted around 20 miles. A Marathon is 26.2 miles. That means the last that for the last 4-6 miles you are running on fat as your primary fuel source and results in a sudden onset of fatigue as your body isn’t used to burning fuel in this manner. Hence, the bonk.

I’ve never run an actual marathon before, so I’ve never personally experienced “the bonk” myself in a race. The longest I’ve ever run in one continuous session is 17 miles to date. I don’t know if I’ll ever run a real marathon someday, but maybe. Again, I don’t set goals much at all these days. My focus is living my values in the present and letting that take me wherever it naturally goes as the compound effect sets in. Hell, I never intended to run 17 miles either when I did that in the first place, it just happened one day when the weather was nice out and Emilia and I felt like we should just keep going on that particular day. 17 miles later, I had a new longest run of my life. I doubt I’ll ever enter a formal marathon someday, but I can’t rule out running 26.2 miles on some random day in the future just because Emilia and I wanted to do it.

With all of that said, I may not know what “the bonk” feels like in a running event yet, but I sure as hell have felt “the bonk” on this Year of Magical Learning journey recently. I’ve been writing for continuously on this project for almost 18 months. For the first 15 months, I wrote every single day (Mon-Fri) for this project without missing a day (except maybe once or twice). That pace and cadence brought me to around reflection / book 300 in this journey with relative ease. Was it challenging to accomplish this, you bet it was, but it wasn’t impossible. Emilia and I had been writing and reading every day for 18 months straight as training prior to the journey beginning. We had a ton stored energy and fuel to burn in the form of 100 books already consumed to write about in between new books we finished. Most importantly, we had a purpose.

For 300 books / reflections, Emilia and I were in the zone. Each morning it felt like new ideas just spontaneously formed and magically ended up on my computer screen. We would go to bed dreaming about what we wanted to write about the next day, we’d wake up full of energy, run straight to the computer, and boom…reflection complete.

We also had a lot of additional help the first 15 months in the form of our nanny Ciara. She got here early in the morning, and I never had to worry about breaking concentration to put my “Dad” hat on and get Luca up and ready for the day. Emilia and I could safely write in my office each morning without interruption. Life was good.

That all changed around reflection 300 when Emilia and I hit the proverbial “bonk” on this journey ourselves. If you do the math and divide 300/365, you get 82%. If you multiply 82% x 26.2 miles, you might find that we are actually at 21.53 miles in this Year of Magical Learning Marathon. I didn’t realize it until reading this book, but we are smack in the middle of “bonk” territory on this journey.

The bonk sucks!

For the past few months since I hit 300 reflections, each day it felt like a slog to get out of bed and write. Everything was breaking down with the processes and routines Emilia and I had set to cruise to this point. I could no longer write everyday as I had caught up to the stored books I had in reserve that I was using to power my forward in the off days between finishing new books since I started writing. I went from easily churning out 5 reflections a week to being happy to get 2 or 3 done. Ciara left us to bring her little bundle of joy into the world so I was racing against the clock each morning and watching the baby monitor in a panic while frantically typing to make sure Luca didn’t get up which would ruin the flow. Worst of all, finding new ideas to write about were no longer coming my way and I was starting to wonder if the well of ideas had run dry and if it was even possible to get to 365.

Basically, the shit got real…and also really hard!

It took me a few weeks of this new normal and living in the bonk zone to finally accept that this is the journey now. It was hard to accept it, but after fighting for like a month I finally relented. Once I accepted that I wasn’t going to ever be at my best anymore on this journey , it was freeing. I know these reflections aren’t the best right now, I know that I’m limping along trying to get to the finish line, I know that I’m tired, but I also know why I’m doing this. Nothing is going to stop me from living for 2 and honoring my promise to my daughter.

We are at 335/365 as of today. That is 24.04 miles into our YOML marathon. I can feel that finish line right around the corner. I can see Emilia and I running through the tape together! We will get there, and I’m starting to get my wind back for the final kick.

LET’S FINISH THIS THING STRONG!

Question: How do you combat the bonk?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami