Strong Will

I'm reading What I Talk About When I Talk About Running: A Memoir, by Haruki Murakami.

It's odd, but I'm ripping through it.

It was a Christmas gift from my brother Bill, and for some reason I picked it up. I'm a terrible person to buy books for. I like to read, but I tend to read what I feel like reading next, usually on some exploratory agenda of my own.

He's telling the story while training for a marathon in his late fifties. Which, I will note in passing, is my current situation.

I was amused by this:

When I tell people I run every day, some are quite impressed. "You must have a strong will," they sometimes tell me.

He then makes the point that he likes running, so whether he has a strong will or not, he runs because it suits him.

But later in the book he quotes from an article about his first marathon run, which was a solo run from Athens to Marathon, in summer heat:

At around twenty-three miles I start to hate everything. Enough already! My energy has scraped bottom, and I don't want to run anymore. I feel like I'm driving a car on empty.
...
I've totally forgotten how to move my body. All my muscles feel like they've been shaved away with a rusty plane.

He finished anyway. He says that he almost always feels that way at mile 23. Which I think settles the question of whether he has a strong will.

Pushing through that much pain and fatigue
puts him in the "strong-willed" league.