Running & Spouses (Read 832 times)

How do your respective spouses/significant others feel about your running & racing? I'm looking at the 2007 calendar & all the various races available & working out my campaign strategy. Training's easy, most of my running is done at night after dinner, locally & it's part of the family routine. Racing's different. I work a lot of weekends & to carve time out of already limited family time to travel to a race,plus the expense...it could be challenging. How do you work it?

My wife is very supportive and she actually started running herself. She didn't need to do any C25K or similar plan and is actually running 3-4 miles 3 times a week. She's even contemplating doing a 5K in th enext few months. I've only done one race so far, but I plan to do at least 4 this year (5K, 10K, marathon, plus a possible half-marathon) and she's all for it. She likes the fact that running helped me lose 50lbs so far and I'm a lot lighter and in far better shape than when we got married 8.5 years ago

For training, I try and do most of my running (including long runs) in the early mornings before DH is awake. This allows me to 1) start the day with a feeling of accomplishment 2)maintain family time after the workday is over 3)limit my excuses as to why I can't run that evening. Now if I remember correctly, mornings don't work for you because you have to be at work at butt-early o'clock anyway. For races, I just try to limit them and make sure that the ones we do go to are fun for both of us. I try to do one every other month, or occasionally one per month, and we make a family event out of it. He walks around, takes lots of pictures and people-watches while I run. It is also fun to make a mini-weekend vacation and do a destination race. Again, that may not be practical with your schedule, but it works for us.

My DH is very supportive- he's been after me to run for ages and is astounded that a friend finally talked me into it. He's a bit mistified and baffled at the races, as he's never needed races to keep him going (he's been running for over 15 yrs) He's now after me to start in on the strength training

Dear Husband Dear Wife Dear Son Dear Daughter DH, DW, DS, DD etc.

My wife once had a dream that I had "DH" tatooed on my chest. She said I told her in the dream it meant "Damn Her!" She's a complicated lady.

Dh started running a little before I did. When it comes to racing we take turns ( for smaller races). For the longer races we usually get inlaws to babysit and we run them together. This year we're doing 2 HM and a Marathon together.

Honestly - I think that John is relieved that whilst I am running I am not nagging him for a fifth baby. I don't think he's very interested in my running though. Mostly I feel that I am boring him when I mention it and the reason that I run so early in the morning is so I don't take away from family time. I don't think he would like that. When I go to Waiheke Island for the race on the 20th I will be gone most of the day and he will be left looking after the little ones so i don't think that he's exactly excited by that thought. He's not a very active man. When his back went recently and he saw my physio, she asked him to bend over and touch his toes. He replied 'I don't do exercise'. He's not kidding either! Exercise for John happens if the local dairy is closed and he has to walk down the road to buy a mince and cheese pie for his lunch! Claire xxx