The only book I pulled out to read from Murakami’s long list of works was on running. This remains an unusual book in his writings. Also, it indicates how much running has meant to him.
This is how he ends his New Yorker piece on running –
At any rate, this is how I started running. Thirty-three—that’s how old I was then. Still young enough, though no longer a young man. The age that Jesus Christ died. The age that F. Scott Fitzgerald started to go downhill. It’s an age that may be a kind of crossroads in life. It was the age when I began my life as a runner, and it was my belated, but real, starting point as a novelist.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/09/the-running-novelist
Contested Realities 