And look, folks, he did it!
Our whole family is proud.Americais proud.
What could be more arduous, more admirable, morepurethan marathon training?
And who among us could find it in ourselves to resent a person who undertakes this endeavor?
That persons partner, thats who.
Resentful in a way that I couldnt quite put a finger on.
One friend of a friend saw her marriage nosedive after her husband got hooked on running.
We almost gotdeeeevorced, she says.
Thats a 112-mile bike ride, a 2.4-mile swim,anda marathon-length run.
All this, on top of the demanding, long-distance job that left him cranky and jet-lagged.
Which was nothing compared to the toll it took on his parenting.
When the kids soccer Saturdays inevitably rolled around, he was like, Im so sorry.
I have a six-hour training, she sighs.
I wanted to kill him.
These runners blow serious cash on cloudlike Hokas, ocean-plasma gels, and trigger point massages.
Some start eating different meals from the rest of the family in their quest for optimization.
Many salivate over Strava, the now-ubiquitous community-building exercise app, like theyre tweens hooked on TikTok.
Which I guess makes her husband… primary hot-footer?
You should ask yourself why youre making that choice.
Because I guarantee your partner is asking that question.
The most universal marathon widow pet peeve?
The all-in obsessiveness that overtakes the human being they once knew.
Maybe their runner bores them silly with stats and spreadsheets and strategies thatonly people addicted to runningactually care about.
You dont have to be hitched for this fixation to drive you insane.
Do we have to acknowledge that every time you go out for a 2-mile run youretraining for a marathon?
Think of how many people do a marathon every year.
[He acts like] its this special thing, she says, scoffing.
The fact that theyre endlessly droning on, its like, OK, you and 50 million other people.
And, yes, he didorder that stupid inversion chair, which taunts me with its over-the-topness.
But if Im being honest, Sam did not commit many of the other aforementioned runners sins.
He is an extremely conscientious guy.
Who washed his own running clothes.
Who made it to soccer practice, school drop-off, and Trader Joes, just like he always does.
Who continued to eat mostly regular-people food.
And who never made me a marathon widow because he barely got a chance to train at all.
Ready for our special marathon story?
Not while pounding out that 17th mile, but while stepping into his pants.
Did I mention were middle-aged?
It was a bulging disc.
Yet he never shelved his marathon dream.
On the surface, I tried to applaud his determination.
Inside, I steamed and stewed.
(Not that I was about to admit it!)
All three are physiological transformations that, to the partner undergoing them, feel deeply rewarding, Francis says.
but also neglected, deprioritized, left out… left behind.
As Francis puts it, the most valuable resource we have is our attention.
Small, seemingly innocuous (and, hey, healthy!)
Intellectually at least, I truly was happy for my husband to find his bliss on the marathon course.
So, what, as she put it, was complicating my ability to take joy in his pleasure?
I, meanwhile, was the same old me.
A little bored, a little discontent.
A little ambivalent perhaps my most defining quality while he wasall f*cking in.
Hell go no matter what, Barbara says.
Meanwhile, Im, like, looking for any excuse [to get out of my own workout].
But its just not how Im built.
I dont want toenduresomething for fun.
Each time we glimpsed him chugging along, we cheered with genuine pride.
I dont need to do that again.
At the finish line, at last, we were in agreement.
*Name has been changed to protect anonymity.
