Many writers run: it’s a trade secret. Or not so much a secret as it is a known element of the craft—that unlike writing, which seldom offers immediate gratification, running is something that can be quantified. You can track your mileage and your pace; you can see with your own eyes the myriad ways your body and mind strengthen; and most importantly, during every run, you can set in place a finish line: one that you can cross, no matter how long it takes or how well you compete, with a racing and full-throttled heart.
“But in many ways running is a natural extension of writing,” writes Nick Ripatrazone for The Atlantic. “The steady accumulation of miles mirrors the accumulation of pages, and both forms of regimented exertion can yield a sense of completion and joy.” Some of my favorite writers—Haruki Murakami, Hanif Abdurraqib, Joyce Carol Oates—have written extensive memoirs or essays about their writing lives; their mornings almost always begin with a few miles, then a few pages, then a few more miles. It’s a sport that demands diligence, but also one that can be practiced in solitude: two things that writers abide by already and that for many, fit naturally into their daily schedules. But despite all that is great about this relationship between writing and running, I have yet to experience its benefits, and this is because no matter how many times I lace up my sneakers and throw on my headphones, I find myself unable to enter into that flow state. In other words: I just really don’t like it.
I do, however, enjoy lifting weights. Four years ago, I would spend five nights per week at my neighborhood gym—alternating between upper body and lower body, plus core workouts and some cardio; this schedule, which I had designed myself, was meant to reanimate my writing life. At the time, I could hardly write a sentence, let alone an entire essay—the anxiety of which kept me up at night, as I started to internalize my own failure as an artist. But after moving to Japan and realizing that my tattoos barred me from exercising at most gyms, I gave it up altogether. This is lazy reasoning, of course—if I had truly wanted to, I could have—but now that I am transitioning into the next phase of things, panic has crept back into its usual corners. I don’t have much of a schedule outside of my work as a teacher, and when I come home, I find myself surrounded by piles of things to be packed or sorted. But even if running hasn’t taken hold, sports more generally has—baseball and basketball in particular, though I was also lucky enough to attend the qualifying JFA Paris Olympics Women’s Soccer match with Batya at the National Stadium here in Tokyo. Japan against North Korea. Japan won.
This is why, I think, I’ve been studying Shohei Ohtani’s daily routine. In Japan, as he is in America, Ohtani is a huge star, and while some of that can be traced back to genetics—his mother, Kayoko, was an amateur badminton player while his father, Toro, played baseball for Japan’s industrial league—a lot of his success boils down to his almost monastic dedication to baseball. In lieu of having my own routine at the moment, focusing on Ohtani’s career has strangely provided me the kind of structure I hope to instill again for myself once I move back to the States. My interest in following and tracking professional athletes’ lifestyles isn’t unusual for writers either; John McPhee, one of my favorite essayists, profiled Princeton University basketball star, Bill Bradley, during his senior year in 1965:
During much of the game, if he has a clear shot, fourteen feet from the basket, say, and he sees a teammate with an equally clear shot ten feet from the basket, he sends the ball to the teammate. Bradley apparently does not stop to consider that even though the other fellow is closer to the basket he may be far more likely to miss the shot. This habit exasperates his coaches until they clutch their heads in despair. But Bradley is doing what few people ever have done—he is playing basketball according to the foundation pattern of the game. Therefore, the shot goes to the closer man. Nothing on earth can make him change until Princeton starts to lose. Then he will concentrate a little more on the basket.
McPhee’s conjecturing and figuring about Bradley’s various moves—not only from the perspective of a curious writer, which McPhee is known to be, but also from that of an ardent fan—made me think again about my recent obsession over Ohtani. I suppose the overlapping concentric circles between writers and athletes make more sense to me now. In many ways, spending this last week deeply engaged with professional athleticism has reignited a sense of discipline for my craft. And just as running has become ubiquitous in the writing world, Ohtani’s baseball playing has served a similar purpose in my own. Even Haruki Murakami, who wrote an entire memoir about the ways running is both spiritually and physically restorative, owes his writing career to baseball. I wanted to share a longer excerpt from his essay to end this week’s Process Diary, “The Moment I Became a Novelist,” which ran in Lit Hub’s Summer 2025 issue:
One bright April afternoon in 1978, I attended a baseball game at Jingu Stadium, not far from where I lived and worked. It was the Central League season opener, first pitch at one o’clock, the Yakult Swallows against the Hiroshima Carp. I was already a Swallows fan in those days, so I sometimes popped in to catch a game—a substitute, as it were, for taking a walk.
Back then, the Swallows were a perennially weak team (you might guess as much from their name) with little money and no flashy big-name players. Naturally, they weren’t very popular. Season opener it may have been, but only a few fans were sitting beyond the outfield fence. I stretched out with a beer to watch the game. At the time there were no bleacher seats out there, just a grassy slope. The sky was a sparkling blue, the draft beer as cold as could be, and the ball strikingly white against the green field, the first green I had seen in a long while. The Swallows first batter was Dave Hilton, a skinny newcomer from the States and a complete unknown. He batted in the leadoff position. The cleanup hitter was Charlie Manuel, who later became famous as the manager of the Cleveland Indians and the Philadelphia Phillies. Then, though, he was a real stud, a slugger the Japanese fans had dubbed ‘the Red Demon.’
I think Hiroshima’s starting pitcher that day was Yoshiro Sotokoba. Yakult countered with Takeshi Yasuda. In the bottom of the first inning, Hilton slammed Sotokoba’s first pitch into left field for a clean double. The satisfying crack when the bat met the ball resounded throughout Jingu Stadium. Scattered applause rose around me. In that instant, for no reason and on no grounds whatsoever, the thought suddenly struck me: I think I can write a novel.
I can still recall the exact sensation. It felt as if something had come fluttering down from the sky, and I had caught it cleanly in my hands. I had no idea why it had chanced to fall into my grasp. I didn’t know then, and I don’t know now. Whatever the reason, it had taken place. It was like a revelation. Or maybe epiphany is the closest word. All I can say is that my life was drastically and permanently altered in that instant—when Dave Hilton belted that beautiful, ringing double at Jingu Stadium.
Thanks for reading,
Rachel
Nice one! How about bike riding? Do you hate that?