Foxes that run

The global pop superstar chats with legendary author and fellow marathoner Haruki Murakami on the sublime simplicity of running—and how it nourishes the creative life. By Sophie Heawood Photography by Laura Jane Coulson

Harry Styles is asking for advice. He’d been nervous about today, almost couldn’t believe it was happening. But excited too, to sit down with one of his heroes, a man who had made him feel it was okay to be vulnerable. Someone who inspired him to take up running. Marathons, specifically.

“I wonder if you might have any advice to pass on to me: as a man, as an artist and as a runner?” he asks.

He poses this to Haruki Murakami, celebrated Japanese novelist and author of What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a book Styles credits with making him believe he actually could run a marathon. Which he did in 2025, first in Tokyo finishing in 3:24, then in Berlin six months later, when he crossed the finish line in a stunning 2:59:13.

“Such a difficult question,” says Murakami with a chuckle.

“Well, as a human being really,” Styles clarifies, laughing too.

They’ve been chatting for an hour or so, Styles having flown in to meet the writer near his home. They make an unlikely pair: the 32-year-old singer, songwriter, and actor, and the 77-year-old best-selling author. But they share a love of running and quickly develop an easy rapport.

Styles has come prepared, with deliberate and thoughtful questions revealing a level of introspection rare in a young man who’s been in the public eye since the age of 16.

The wide-ranging conversation covers a lot: attention span (Harry’s, he struggled with reading as a kid), illness (Murakami’s, he’s recovering from a hospital stay and hasn’t been able to run), solitude, observation, music, creativity, fame, and the desire to be ordinary.

And running of course, which has everything to do with all of that.

Murakami, who has finished more than 25 marathons, thinks for another beat, then declares, “One of the important things for human beings is to embrace the contradiction. When I’m writing, I always feel I have a contradiction and that’s why I want to express myself…to understand it. Even at my age I’m still wondering, what is this chaos in me?

“That would be my advice to you as an artist as well as a man. If there’s something that’s dirty within you, you can’t just present it as is. You kind of have to turn the contradiction into something positive by sharing it with other people who might not think they have one. Sublimate those contradictions within you into art.”

He pauses again, then smiles. “My advice for you as a runner? No contradictions.”Laura Jane Coulson

Glasses: Oakley Cybr Zero.Laura Jane Coulson

T-shirt and Adidas trainers: vintage, sourced on eBay. Shorts: Pleasing. Socks: Calzedonia.

YOU CAN’T GO TOO FAST TOO QUICKLY

Harry Styles: One of the things I really loved in your book about running was that it freed me from the idea that music had to be an unhealthy profession and I had to be this tortured soul.

Your point is that being healthy makes you able to be an artist for a long time, that you can be a structured, healthy person and make great work. So I have a lot of gratitude to you for that.

Haruki Murakami: To write a book is not so difficult, but if you try to keep on writing, you have to be strong. It’s powered by endurance.

When I was in my teens, musicians died so young. Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix. I think they couldn’t wait—live fast, die young. But that is not a thing that I wanted.

What I wanted to do was live a normal life because I’m just a normal guy—but then write abnormal books. That’s the kind of ideal that I was pursuing.

HS: If you want to run a marathon, it takes a lot of discipline. You can’t go too fast too quickly.

Has it always felt obvious to you that your running and writing feed each other? Or do you think it can be really easy to overcomplicate that, and actually, you just like writing and you also just like running?

HM: Running and writing books both match my personality. With running, it’s not just about speed. I was never into sports that involve balls. It’s more about me competing with my own self.

HS: We live in a time when making such an effort can be considered quite uncool, and there’s this romanticism that comes with the idea of being an artist, as if it’s this almost spiritual thing that just happens to you. But in your work I see a lack of fear around being uncool.

When you write about sex and masculinity, your characters aren’t all experts at sex—there are a lot of scenes of them fumbling around. There’s an innocence to them, as well as vulnerability, and shame.

That has definitely changed the way I view being masculine and being vulnerable. I wondered if that was something you felt you did consciously or discovered while you were writing it?

HM: I’m just an ordinary guy. Always. When I was a teenager or in my 20s, I wasn’t particularly adept at anything. But when I graduated college, I didn’t want to be a salaryman or to belong to a company. I created a small jazz club in Tokyo, I owned it, and I didn’t think I was going to be a writer, I just loved to read books.

But when I turned 29 the desire to write was very strong. So I wrote a book and I became a novelist—kind of on a whim.

But I’m still an ordinary guy living an ordinary life with my wife and everything. When I get interviewed, I sometimes feel awkward because why would an interviewer think that I’m special? That’s why the characters in my books are just normal people and they have that awkwardness.

I don’t even think I’m a creator; I’m just a recipient. I love to listen to music, I love to read books, but I’m just a reader, just a listener. I did try to practice some musical instruments, but I couldn’t get into it because I hate practice. It’s boring.

HS: Oh, it is.

(They both laugh.)Laura Jane Coulson

Nike track jacket: vintage, sourced on eBay.

IN THIS TOGETHER

Styles’s fourth album, Kiss All The Time. Disco, Occasionally, drops March 6. Fans have been clamoring since 2022 for a follow-up to the chart-topping Harry’s House.

But after years of intense touring, Styles was prepared to wait much longer to record again—five, eight, 12 years if he had to. He was no longer sure what he wanted to say.

“Something I’ve often struggled with, in the middle of a tour, is feeling like I’m not sure what I’m giving, not sure what I’m adding to the world. Especially when the reward system and the kind of…adulation that you can receive feels so loud. Like clearly I’m getting so much from this, I’m getting all this energy. People are giving me so much, which I deeply appreciate. But what am I contributing? At times I felt quite existential about that.”

In 2010 when he stood baby-faced and floppy-haired on The X Factor stage describing plans to study law and sociology at university, he was just an ordinary lad with a part-time job in a bakery and a mum who thought he could sing.

Sixteen years later, after navigating stratospheric success and the massive operational apparatus that comes with it, those existential feelings were exacerbated by a sense of growing isolation.

“Over the years, I had to say no to everything I was invited to,” he says, “whether it was a friend’s birthday, a trip somewhere amazing, an opening. I started to wonder if I was saying no because I really was so busy or because it was more comfortable than saying yes. When you close yourself off to protect yourself from people who might bring negativity into your life, you’re also missing out on positive experiences.”Laura Jane Coulson

Shorts and cap: vintage, sourced on eBay.

He turned 30 in 2024 and decided to take some time off work, partly to do the things that people did in their 20s.

He started traveling for fun, “for the first time in—well, in some ways, ever,” he says. Japan, Spain, Germany. He loved Berlin, and found himself going back again and again, making new friends, hitting the club scene at night.

“Good electronic music is so good, you know—especially the melodic aspect. When you’re out at night, it’s such a community, but you’re also watching people have such individual experiences.”

He began to think he wanted his next album to deliver that feeling. “I wanted to recreate [what] I had on the dance floor, being lost in instrumentation and the musicality. It was so immersive, like, this is how I want to feel when I’m on stage too.

“I don’t want it to feel like a sermon I’m delivering. I wanted it to feel like, oh, we’re in this music together. Like I’m in it with you.”

This lifestyle was a lot for someone so accustomed to more structure, which is where running came in. It offered discipline and a different way of being alone.

“Because in some of those new experiences, there’s just so much stimulation, right? So many people, and it’s just so loud. So then running also became my processing place for all of that. Really being by myself.

“When you’re training for a marathon, which is the loneliest part, you just kind of set out for a run, and three hours later you come back. But there’s a real synergy between that and electronic music. It’s kind of hypnotic and becomes like a mantra almost.”

He started recording the new album in early 2025 with his longtime producer Kid Harpoon at Hansa Studios in Berlin, near a five-mile stretch of road he ran most days. Sometimes he’d listen to his own demos on his phone, making notes as he went.

“I used to have song playlists but realized that I’d be too aware of saying to myself, ‘Okay, just 20 more songs to go,’” he says.

“When I started listening to more electronic music”—artists like British electronic producers Floating Points and Jamie XX, or mixes by German techno DJs Fadi Mohem and Ben Klock—“the shift felt just very hypnotic, like oh I’m really lost in this thing. It was helpful to my running to get to that place where I felt like I was meditating right there. It makes the time go by in such a different way.”Laura Jane Coulson

Track jacket and pants: Pleasing.Laura Jane Coulson

JUST YOU MOVING THROUGH THE WORLD

HS: Do you find that you end up being creative while you’re running, or is it a time when you set everything else aside?

Personally, I’ve found the hypnotic, meditative aspect of music to have a lot of synergy with the meditative aspect of running.

When I’m running is when I have…time to think a lot about what I’m making and other things in my life too.

HM: When I’m running, I’m just running. I don’t think much. I listen to music mostly.

When I come back to sit in front of the desk I begin thinking, but when I’m running, I’m kind of empty. Something comes into me, but I don’t notice it.

To be empty is my one of my purposes with running. I feel that training your body is the way to create the perfect vessel, building a foundation for the ideas to come into.

HS: For me, one of the things that can be complicated is that, as an artist, say if you’re a novelist or a musician or a filmmaker, you’re an observer—but when you become a known person, you become the observed. You know you’re still the same, but other people can begin to view you as something different.

So something I love so much about running is the simplicity of it. You are the observer once more, and you can go about your day in the most naked form. It’s just you, alone, moving through the world.

That’s what I love about it: You don’t need anything, just a pair of shoes.

HM: Ah, but that’s not what I’ve got. As a novelist, I don’t have to be observed that much, like you do in your job. As a writer, you can just stay in all you want. You don’t have to meet anybody.

HS: One of my favorite things you ever wrote was, don’t feel sorry for yourself, only assholes do that.

Something else I like in your work is the poetry of simple things, like how you describe sitting down to eat breakfast, or having a beer.

That has definitely influenced the small moments that I take to myself when I sit down and appreciate the everyday things in front of me. It changes the way that you see the world.Laura Jane Coulson

Glasses: Oakley Radar Plate. Shorts: vintage, sourced on eBay. Socks: Calzedonia. Shoes: Nike Vomero Plus.

A FIXED START AND A FINISH LINE

Originally from Cheshire in the north of England, Styles has lived in London for 15 years now and is a big fan of the hilly, green expanses of Hampstead Heath.

But when he started walking and running through the city itself, he fell in love with it in a different way.

“You see things from ground level that you don’t see if you’re driving. There were so many areas of London I had missed,” he says.

“And during my early days in One Direction, we spent so much time inside hotels and venues that there are countries I’ve been to that I didn’t really experience.

“So when I travel now, it’s about committing to going outdoors to see some stuff, whether that’s running or walking. You experience places in a whole different way.”

Styles takes scant credit for much of his commercial success. It’s “all about the fans, it isn’t down to me. I can’t sell out a venue—only they can do that. And there’s a producer that I work with who makes me great, and everyone who works on my team—everything that I’ve been rewarded for takes a lot of people.” Running, in a way, is the opposite of that, which provides a deeply refreshing contrast. The pursuit of creativity—making music, writing novels—can be freeing, but also loaded with pressure. An album might never feel finished, but a marathon has a fixed start and a finish line.

“Sport is so binary, and it’s all about time,” Styles says. “It’s not about me trying to top the charts, because I’m not that level of runner. But I can beat myself. Do the training and get through it.”

Styles isn’t new to running. He’d go out for some easy runs back in his 20s, but the habit didn’t stick. “Being young, I didn’t stretch enough or take care of my body, so I got injured pretty quickly,” he says.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Now he trusts that he’ll show up. “The satisfaction comes from knowing that on the Wednesday that I felt terrible, I still got up and ran,” he says.

“I used to think that trying to run a sub-3:00 was such a specific goal, the idea of doing it in such a close time, how do you manage to keep it up throughout? But the thing that appealed to me with running was how much I could actually control it.”

He’s learning what parts he can control; pacing, for one—his splits in Berlin were nearly identical.

And fueling: “I usually drink a lot of water, but I was really scared of peeing myself during the [Berlin] Marathon, so I fueled up in the morning with a lot of electrolytes and not too much actual water, then I drank lots during the race,” he says.

As for food, “usually before every long run, I eat the biggest croissant I can find.”

What about the things he can’t control? The sheer vulnerability, the nakedness of being a known person running through the streets of London?

About that, he seems surprisingly unbothered, often clad in bright, multicolored training gear and head-turning Nike Alphaflys.

“Well, the main thing is that you’re always moving. You can turn a corner wherever,” he says. “I think with people who see me, it’s a bit more ‘Was that…?’ rather than, ‘Oh look it’s him!’ And by that time, you’re already gone.”Laura Jane CoulsonLaura Jane Coulson

NO ONE CAN RUN A MARATHON FOR YOU

HM: What I like about running is that it’s a very solitary thing, but only in a way. You’re alone, but then you’re also with other runners, with a vague kind of boundary between you.

My book about running was translated into many languages, so wherever I go in the world, if I’m on a run, other runners recognize me and call out my name. So wherever I go, I have a friend.

HS: In the first paragraph of that running book you claim it’s a well-known saying that a gentleman doesn’t talk about women he’s dated or the tax he’s paid. Then you admit you’ve just made it up, but that really people also shouldn’t talk about how they stay healthy. Haha.

It’s wonderful to start a book about running with a sense of humor. As the normal guy you said you are—not as some kind of ethereal character.

In fact I think my favorite thing about you is that I know nothing really about you, other than the work you’ve given to people. So I’m as deeply grateful for the amount that you’ve chosen to keep to yourself as for what you’ve chosen to share with us.

HM: You write music and you write the lyrics, right? That’s great. I’ve been wondering, always, what is creativity? I have been writing books, creating something, for 45 years or so, but still I don’t know what creativity is.

There is something in me, but I cannot grasp that essence at will. Because, uh, it just comes to me. And when I finish writing, it’s gone. And I wait until it comes again.

But waiting is not an easy thing. Sometimes it’s so hard, because you are not sure if it’s coming back. But you have to wait.

HS: Yeah and submitting to that waiting can feel quite passive—so perhaps the juxtaposition between that and running is what you enjoy so much.

With creativity being something that isn’t tangible, it’s subjective, but then you’ve got running in which there is a beginning and there is a finish line. There’s no finish line on being creative.

As a musician, there’s so much that I still don’t understand about what that means and what that will mean to me in years to come.

But [running is] a competition with yourself, whereas to make something and be celebrated for it externally is so much about other people deciding that they like it. It depends on them.

Advertisement - Continue Reading Below

Embrace Running Like Harry Styles

Harry Styles Conquered the Marathon—and So Can You. Here’s How.

Harry’s Playlist Hack That Can Transform Your Running

How Haruki Murakami Can Inspire You to Run a Marathon

HM: You have to create a foundation in order to put stuff on it. The act of running taught me many good things.

My peak as a runner was when I was 45 years old; after that, it went down. I knew there was a peak for everything, and I had to prepare for it.

But writing has no peak—I’m 77 years old, but I’m still writing, and my new novel will be published this year. This July. I just finished it. I’m very happy!

HS: Congratulations! After your book Norwegian Wood became such a huge hit [in the late 80s], was there some response, kind of like an artistic defiance there to make your next books more surreal?

And do you think any part of that was a subconscious reaction to…it becoming so popular in a way that felt unnatural to you, as someone who wanted to remain living as an ordinary person?

HM: In Japan, Norwegian Wood sold over two million copies at that time. So I was kind of depressed for a year or so because it became so popular. I don’t want to be popular.

But I recovered from the depression, and I started to write something different. So that was my turning point, I guess. But how do you think about your albums that have sold well?

HS: Yeah, I get it. I think there’s a point when you’re making something, when it feels so pure to you; a really beautiful moment where it’s finished and it’s just yours.

Then there’s almost a sadness at the handing-over. You have to let it go, like sending your kid off to school, and then it feels somewhat detached from you.

But only in the last couple years have I realized how much of people’s responses to it are not necessarily about me at all. I think I’m of less importance.

And that can be quite scary, realizing that it’s not about me, but it can also be really freeing to know actually, my job here is to just remain a person, and to keep recording that. That’s what my job is. Rather than me being supposed to deliver the answer and let everyone know what life is about.

I think there’s freedom in realizing that actually my job is to let people watch while I ask the questions. Because questions are more interesting than answers.

HM: Yeah, I feel the same thing about my books, I’m just offering the question, not the answers. There are obviously going to be critics and suchlike who say this guy’s the winner and that guy’s the winner, but I don’t like that world, so I just stay away from it. I’d rather be just running.

And I get the same vibe from you. You’re probably not the person that cares about getting awards or how many records you sold, and you probably place some more importance on, you want to live the life you want to live.

You win an award because somebody else says you’re worthy of an award, but what’s more important is what you think is of value to your life.

HS: I’m in a field in which there’s so much opinion on who’s the best, with all these rankings of who sold the most, who’s won this award—even though music is such a subjective thing and isn’t really tangible like that.

The thing that I’ve found, in the rest of my life but particularly in running, is the idea of trusting myself to do exactly what I say I’m going to do.

To say to myself, I know that you can do something difficult, and that you can get up and train when you don’t want to train, and that you’re able to push through hard things.

Having that kind of self-integrity—no one can run a marathon for you. Whereas there are a lot of people who help me make music, put the music out, put on a show and make me look good at it! But running is a conversation with myself.