A few years ago, I con­tributed an essay to a book about run­ning. It was called Die Philoso­phie des Laufens (The Philoso­phie of Run­ning) and pub­lished by Mairisch, a small inde­pen­dent press with excel­lent taste and the kind of lit­er­ary courage that larg­er hous­es often like to claim for themselves.

In Jan­u­ary, Mairisch got in touch with me about some­thing unex­pect­ed. Dio­genes — one of the most estab­lished and respect­ed pub­lish­ers in the Ger­man-speak­ing world — want­ed to include my essay in an anthol­o­gy. The book would be called Lauf und davon — Geschicht­en vom Jog­ging (Run and Away — Sto­ries of Jog­ging). Of course I said yes. It felt like one of those deci­sions you make instant­ly, hap­pi­ly, almost casu­al­ly, with­out ful­ly under­stand­ing what is actu­al­ly happening.

The Experience of Being Alive in a Running Body

Only today did it real­ly land. My contributor’s copy arrived in the mail, and sud­den­ly the whole thing became real in the most phys­i­cal, unmis­tak­able way. There it was: my name, my text — Im Takt, aus dem Takt — sit­ting in the table of con­tents beside writ­ers like John Irv­ing, Alan Sil­li­toe, and Isabel Bog­dan. Names I know. Names that car­ry weight. Some of them giants, nation­al­ly and inter­na­tion­al­ly. And some­how, improb­a­bly, there I am among them.

It is a strange hon­our. That is the phrase that keeps com­ing back to me. Strange, because it still feels slight­ly unre­al. Strange, because I know exact­ly where I come from as a writer: not from a care­ful­ly engi­neered lit­er­ary career, but from curios­i­ty, from think­ing on the page, from try­ing to say some­thing pre­cise about the expe­ri­ence of being alive in a run­ning body. And yet it is an hon­our all the same — qui­et, exhil­a­rat­ing, and a lit­tle hard to process.

The essay they select­ed, Im Takt, aus dem Takt (In Time, Out of Time), is about run­ning with apps, about rhythm and mea­sure­ment and what hap­pens when a run is guid­ed, inter­rupt­ed, framed, and some­times dis­tort­ed by tech­nol­o­gy. It is about pace, but also about atten­tion. About the odd ten­sion between want­i­ng to opti­mise the run and want­i­ng to dis­ap­pear into it. Even now, I like that this was the piece that made its way into the anthol­o­gy. It feels con­tem­po­rary in the right way: not loud, not preachy, just inter­est­ed in one of the lit­tle con­tra­dic­tions of mod­ern run­ning life.

Writing Has Its Own Strange Timing

What I feel most today is some­thing soft. Grat­i­tude, def­i­nite­ly. A cer­tain dis­be­lief. And yes, pride too — the decent kind, I hope. The kind that comes from recog­nis­ing that some­thing you wrote found a life beyond the moment in which you wrote it. That it trav­elled. That oth­er peo­ple saw val­ue in it. That it now sits, bound and print­ed, in unex­pect­ed­ly dis­tin­guished company.

So this is a small note of thanks, and also a small note of won­der. Books still have the pow­er to sur­prise you. Some­times a text you wrote years ago comes back wear­ing a dif­fer­ent cov­er and opens a door you did not even know was there. And some­times the mail brings not just a book, but a reminder: writ­ing has its own strange timing.

And since I am already here, let me say this plain­ly: Lauf und davon — Geschicht­en vom Joggen is a beau­ti­ful idea for a book, and now, hap­pi­ly, a real one. If you care about run­ning not only as sport but as sto­ry, mood, obses­sion, escape, and way of mov­ing through the world, this anthol­o­gy might be worth a place on your shelf.