Sharing my marriage with running

If you judged my marriage based on my facebook posts you might assume I was a.) madly in love and walked around with butterflies flitting around my head while blue birds chirped on my shoulder, or b.)   full of shit and overcompensating for the fact that we actually scream and throw plates at each other during dinner in front of our horrified children.

Thankfully, neither is true. I just tend to lean towards positive posts on the FB and I am married to such a cool guy that I have no shortage of goo goo gaa gaa thoughts in my head. Also, he works in 12 hour shifts so I have the opportunity to miss him a lot. The second he isn't hanging out with me his sweetness shines.

I realized, though, that I don't often feel compelled to post about the long arguments we have about nothing. Or how we temporarily fall out of love and become angry teenage boys fighting in the locker room.

How we are both always right. We are both smarter than the other. We are both trying to teach the poor other dummy something.
This results in some animated and loud debates about a variety of topics. Spirituality and religion used to be the regular, but more frequently these days- it's running.

So it's a little of both. We are in love. We do lapse into disgusting conversations about how lucky we are to be sharing our lives when it seemed so unlikely until it happened. We marvel at how perfectly suited we are for each other--we both play guitar ( he is much better than me, but I'm pretty OK) and sing badly (I insist that he's slightly worse than me), we both love to live as enthusiastically as possible, being happy, and laughing and making fun of each other and the people around us (usually our kids), and we both love to run. I didn't know I loved it until recently. He always let me know running was a talent of his. I was never in real shape and couldn't appreciate what that meant. I just tucked it away in my mental file of Mark's Cool Points.

When I did get in shape and began experimenting with running, Mark naturally joined me. At first I was the eager student, asking him for advice on everything I did and taking it all to heart and following it to a T. I thought about his advice while I ran every run as fast as I could through the hood. I did my first 5k on his 'training'. It was a small race, and I didn't run fast -but I lucked out and got to be the first female. It was a very exciting way to run one's first 5k, but I was left feeling guilty for running so timidly. After that race I started doing research on how to train for 5k and began to realize Mark's advice was not ideal (to be polite) and he wasn't even following it! He ran a PR for the same race and was really vocal about it. I felt sulky. He hadn't shared his interval training with me. It would have helped immensely to have practiced running fast while tired to prepare for how the end of a race feels.

Now, he wasn't trying to give me bad advice.  He just didn't know what worked for me, like I hadn't learned what worked yet either. I was a complete newbie learning how to run. I just have the bad habit of trying to compete with my husband. It's completely involuntary. I know I'll never run as fast or be as strong as him, but I want to be as close as possible. That won't ever change. I think it can even be a good thing. We make each other want to be better. However, as a hormonal woman, ( I think 30's are the worst, as my remaining fresh eggs are demanding to be used) when I feel like I'm being taunted by his superiority, ( like the time I ran half of a local 5k ecstatic to be in third place overall and Mark passed me with 1 mile to go pushing OUR KID IN A STROLLER)  it incites anger and desire to conquer the unconquerable.

When I asked him how he trained in high school I learned that he ran cross country, but his success was in the 800. This is where I decided he was a terrible coach and we went off on our separate running ways. We have been arguing about different training methods ever since. Sometimes at the dinner table. In front of our poor confused kids who probably think a sad grown up world awaits them where all there is to do is fight over who's better at practicing something as simple as running.

He pretty much only runs hard workouts. I run hard and easy. He's fearless and will literally run until he sees stars. I am conservative and only let it all hang out when I feel strong enough to. Usually after a lot of preparation. Our mileage is much different. As are we.

It's also a constant time battle. We have to take turns running since we are parents and if workouts go long on a weeknight, it can cause tension. He runs fewer days, but his warm ups last forever and he can be out there for two hours. It makes me crazy. While I understand he's having fun, I want him for myself sometimes. Of course the next day when he's fully available-I have to get out there.

But, after we go in circles about how best to prepare for whatever or who has been gone the longest- we make up. We point out how much time we can waste arguing about nothing and we re-align ourselves back into the position of allies. Before running came along, that's how we dealt with the relationship problems of two people building and starting a life together (complicated by the fact I left Austin and my family for a small town in SETX) being new parents and newly wedded humans. Ultimately, that's what will keep us friends as long as we both want to be. Two people who share a life and have very different personalities but very similar interests have to maintain and stand up for their unique perspectives. It's his easy going but passionate approach to everything that my maybe too-diligent personality loves. We fight because we know our differences are interesting and without them we would stagnate and not learn from each other. Which is ultimately what happens. The learning. I'm loathe to admit it, but I do try to apply some of his crazy advice sometimes, and I secretly attempt to be more open and loving because it looks so good on him.

Now that we've both gotten in a kind of groove and I've built a bit of an aerobic base, we can run together and enjoy it. Previously he would run too fast and I would quietly suffer out of pride and then pick a fight with him afterwards about not sticking to our pace plan. But I can keep up better now that I run twice as much each week.
He still runs way less, but much faster :/

In the groove. At the same time! :D
Photo by David Lisenby